I Hate Wolves
by Dessa-fly
Summary: Juliet Ero has spent her entire life trying to fit in, but when her parents die in an animal attack, and she's taken away to live in Forks with her relatives she's going to stick out in a big way and not just because she can read minds! Jacob/OC eventuall
1. Chapter 1

**Hi! This is my first story, so please be nice, aha! I'm really sorry if I get some facts wrong, which I most definitely will, but please just do your best to make it make sense. Oh, and does anyone know how to make my document into a 'story' and make a summary? So confused!**

_**Disclaimer: I don't own anything Twilight. Isn't it a shame? What the heck? This program says that 'isn't' is not a word!!!  
**_

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"Flight 203, Sydney to Port Angeles, Washington, now boarding," came the voice over the loud speaker, and I stood up. I grabbed my two suitcases, and looked back and forth.

For the past few hours I had been sitting, waiting for my flight in between the same two people. To my left, there was a woman with dark skin and grey hair. She was knitting a fuchsia scarf and talking on her cell phone with a deep, Jamaican sounding voice. To my right there was a man typing away on his lap top and giggling to himself every few minutes.

For some reason, I was going to miss them. I got attached to people really quickly, although I don't know why. "Good-bye," I said quietly. The lady just smiled briefly and then returned to her conversation, while the man didn't even look up. Not that I had meant them to hear me.

My name is Juliet Ero. Don't call me Jules though, or anything like that. Only my parents called me that, but now they're 'separated', so that's that. Well, they didn't actually get divorced—they were killed in some kind of animal attack, or that's what the police say. They mentioned that it was probably wolves. I _hate_ wolves.

I'm going to say that they're separated though, if anyone asks, because I've spent my entire life fitting in, and I don't plan on ruining that now. Ever since I was little I would beg my mom to buy me the same kinds of clothes that all of the other kids had, and I would never get above-average grades. I guess it would be a little cocky to say that I could've done better, but I'll never know, because I never even tried.

My parents always told me to be myself, to be different, which they were themselves. That's why I never invited them to any school functions. I know I must seem harsh, but I really loved my parents. I still love them. It's just that I wanted to fit in so much because I was so different, in a way that not even my parents could understand.

I can read minds. Well, I could. I've been able to do it for as long as I could remember, but for a while I didn't understand that it was something that not everyone could do. I just thought it was normal. Even after I figured this out, I sometimes got confused as to what people were thinking and what they were actually saying, and trust me, it doesn't go over well when you reply to a person's thoughts.

I only really starting completely blocking out everyone's thoughts when I was about five years old, and my best friend and I were playing with our dolls.

_"Julie, my doll's going to be the prettiest doll ever!" she said, grinning while we brushed our Barbie's hair. Sure, we weren't the most original five-year-olds, but what can I say. _

_"Yup, Tammy, she sure is pretty. You should try putting the purple dress on her! Y'know, the one with the little flowers?" I suggested eagerly. _

_"Ooooh, good idea," she replied, grabbing it out of my hands. _

_"Hey Tammy…" I began slowly. "I heard that your dad is kinda sick…"_

_"Yeah," she said, looking down. He's not just sick, he has cancer, and he's gonna die. Mommy told me so. _

_"Oh, Tammy, I'm so sorry, I thought it was just a cold!" I cried._

_"What do you mean?" she asked, putting her doll down and suddenly getting very defensive. _

_"I mean, if he's gonna die," I said quietly, and she froze. _

_It was silent for a moment, before she stood up and screamed, "YOU'RE A FREAK! DON'T YOU EVER TALK TO ME AGAIN! I HATE YOU!"_

After that, I just stopped that part of me that cared about people's thoughts, and no longer listened. It wasn't that hard. That part of my personality was dead, and I never did talk to Tammy Larson—who had since become basically the most popular girl at my school—again.

That doesn't really matter any more though, because I was going to move to America to live with my Aunt Joan and Uncle Mortimer. They live in Washington, DC, in some tiny town called 'Forks'. Why anyone would possibly want to live in a town named after a kitchen utensil, I don't know, but that's where I'm headed.

I come from Australia. Sydney, actually. Why am I leaving the sun, heat, and all the other pros about Australia that I could go on and on listing for some crummy town named forks? Because I don't have anyone left here. It was just my mom, my dad, and I, and now that two thirds are gone I don't much feel like staying here—not that I have a choice, I'm only sixteen years old.

As I boarded my plane I thought back on all of the nights spent crying myself to sleep. All of the mornings I'd spent getting up and hauling my things into my suitcases, before heading to school, all under the watchful eye of our retired neighbors who had offered to watch me until the flight, mainly just to make use of our big screen TV.

Once I was at school I would get to my classes early so that I could tell my teachers what was going on without anyone noticing. When I was leaving for home again, I would always bring a few of my things with me from my locker, so that I wouldn't need to bring them all at once—so that I wouldn't stand out.

Then all of the evenings at home when I would take out a book and practice my American accent, so that my voice wouldn't betray anything unique either.

Now, however, as I took my seat on the plane and noticed that, in the seats surrounding me, were some of the most beautiful people I'd ever seen—and I don't say that lightly—I got the strange feeling that I was about to not only stand out, but be able to write a whole book on the subject.

As the plane started taking off, three things were rattling around in my mind;

_Who are these people?_

_Why do I have the sudden urge to read their minds?_

_God, I hate flying. _


	2. Chapter 2

The plane ride took an eternity. I felt like I was sitting in that same seat for years. I could almost feel my hair growing longer, and my life getting shorter.

Okay, maybe I was being just a little melodramatic, but it was long.

Finally we landed, and I arrived at the air port. The beautiful people—a blonde haired man and a brown haired woman who looked to be maybe in their late twenties—walked off of the plane before me. The man turned to look at me and shot me a dazzling grin. Oh man, I must've looked like an idiot, standing there and staring at him, so I hurriedly looked down and walked towards the luggage that was just now being unloaded.

"Are you Emily?" an old woman with small glasses that looked like they were part of her face asked me.

I shook my head, and suddenly remembered that my aunt and uncle would be looking for me. _Smart, Juliet. Because you would totally be coming to a new country—no wait, a new __**continent**__—just for the heck of it._

I grabbed my two suitcases as soon as they came around. It's a little sad, I think, that I was able to fit my entire life into just these two suitcases.

"Er… Uncle Matt, no, Uncle Pete? Aunt… Rose? Aunt Joan, that was it… Aunt Joan?" I called in a voice that, as uncomfortably loud as it was to me, still got swallowed by the noise of the terminal, while I was having trouble remembering their names.

Suddenly a woman, who looked to be in her mid-thirties, wearing jeans, rain boots, and a slightly oversized rain jacket, ran up to me. "Juliet!" she cried in an overly cheerful tone.

"Um… Aunt Joan?" I asked confused. Her head bobbed up and down in reply.

"Wow…" she said, looking me over for a moment, and suddenly I felt very self conscious. I wasn't wearing anything fancy. I had on a pair of purple sweat pants that had mostly acted as pyjamas as my flight took off yesterday evening in Sydney, and an old t-shirt. It was October but it had been nice and warm in Australia. "Oh, you look nice, but look outside."

I followed her to one of the many windows, my two suitcases in tow. It didn't look all that bad; we did have rain back in Australia too occasionally, unlike what several people think.

I shrugged, and she looked me over again. I was really starting to wonder whether or not she did, in fact, just think that I looked bad. "Oh, this isn't bad at all, just wait until we get to Forks!" she said with a laugh, and with that we headed out the doors and two her small BMW, on our way to 'Forks'.

The ride isn't all that long, but I slept through a bit of it, and when I had awoken the rain pounding on the roof and windows of the car was nearly deafening. I looked outside at what seemed to be a near torrential down pour, and tried to come up with whatever explanation for all of this that I could. "Are you having some sort of flood?" I asked, slightly panicked.

Aunt Joan started laughing so hard that the car was actually swerving slightly. When she had finally regained control of herself she replied, "Oh no, this, my dear, is Forks."

Forks, huh? I don't reply to her, I just nod and turn my self away, pretending that I'm asleep. Instead I gaze out of the window at the buildings, the houses. A police station comes into view, and Aunt Joan murmurs, "I wonder if Mo's off work yet…" more to herself than to me.

Mo? That must be my Uncle Mortimer. I smiled slightly, remembering his name at last. My ipod lit up and I gasped slightly, having been unaware that it was on in the first place. It read _11:14 pm_. Why would he still be at work at a time like this?

Before I could wonder any more, the car came to a stop. "Juliet? Juliet, darling, you have to wake up. We're here, we're at my house."

She thought I was asleep, and so I get up slowly as if I was. I followed her through the house small house, offering to carry my own bags even though she refused. I pretended to still be groggy so as to have an excuse for not asking why my uncle wasn't there.

She showed me to my room, and I sat down on the bed, pretending to be tired more for her benefit than my own. "Well, goodnight," she said, flashing me a smile before leaving the room.

Once she was gone I sat up and surveyed the room that was now my own. Against one wall were the suitcases that I couldn't remember taking out of the car trunk. I dug through them until I found a pair of pyjamas and my toothbrush, and then stood up. The walls of the room were a pale purple, and it was small, but not uncomfortably so. There were a few posters on the wall, but I couldn't tell what they depicted because of the dim light.

There was a closet, a bed, a chair, a night stand, and little else. Luckily there was a lamp, and I leaned over and turned it on, illuminating the room. There were books lining the walls on shelves that I hadn't noticed earlier. The posters that I had seen before, I could now tell, depicted scenes of beautiful country-sides, magnificent castles, and what looked like a European town.

"Welcome to Italy!" one read, and I decided that I'd have to ask Aunt Joan about it later. I glanced out of the window once quickly before going to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Outside it was still raining, and there wasn't anything remotely inspiring in sight. If Aunt Joan had ever been to Italy, how did she end up in a place like this?

I sighed and looked away, before something jerked my attention back to the window. There was some sort of animal darting between the trees, more than one. I blinked, trying to see more clearly, and whatever it was, it was gone now. Maybe a cougar? A fox? Not a wolf, though—I _hate_ wolves.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Dear Diary,October 23**__**rd**___

_**Hi, my name is Juliet Marie Ero. I'm not really used to all of this diary-writing stuff, because I've never done it before, but this morning my Aunt Joan gave me a notebook with the word 'diary' written on the front, so I figured what the heck. **_

_**I just arrived in a small town called Forks, Washington, because my parents died back in Australia where I've lived up till now—I'm sixteen, by the way. So far, I can't really say anything good about this place. It rains a lot, it's a small town, and so far I haven't seen or heard from my uncle at all. My aunt's nice, though. She reminds me a lot of someone, but I can't remember who. **_

_**Um, anyways, about my self… I already told you my name, right, so, um… my birthday is November 3**__**rd**__**, my favourite animal is the cat, and I absolutely hate green beans. **_

_**Sorry, I don't really know what to write, because, again, I've never kept any sort of journal or diary before—except for once in sixth grade when my teacher was very interested in 'self reflection'—so, well, yeah… ha. **_

_**Well, my aunt's calling me now. It's Saturday, so I wonder if she'll make me go to school this Monday… I hope so, I can't stand just sitting around doing nothing. I just need something to think about. That's about it for now, so, bye! **_

—_**Juliet**_

I put the notebook back down on my bed, and stood up to answer my Aunt calling me. "Yes?" I asked, walking down the short hallway and into the kitchen—which was basically the length of the small house.

"I have to go to work, sweetie, but I made you some scrambled eggs. They're on the table, I hope you like them." She said, gesturing towards the table where, on a plate, there was a pile of something that, not even in my wildest dreams, would I guess was meant to be scrambled eggs. "I was thinking that once I got home from work, you and I could go on a little tour, okay?"

I nodded, and she kissed me on the cheek before grinning and then almost twirling out the door.

I walked over to the table and sat down, feeling as though my cheek was probably stained with my aunt's lip stick. I picked up a fork and took a bite out of my 'breakfast', and immediately realized that my Aunt Joan, while being eccentric, glamorous, hyper, and somewhat childish, she could not cook.

I walked over to the fridge and found that it was nearly bare. The freezer, however, was stocked full of frozen pizzas, pre-made meals, and ice cream. I almost laughed out loud, before picking out a 'pizza pocket' and placing it on a plate in the microwave.

The minute and twenty-five seconds that it took to cook, I spent looking around the kitchen.

The cabinets were white with black handles. There was a stainless steel fridge covered with magnets and pictures. One of them was a black and white photo of two girls. One of them was taller, and older than the other, but they were both wearing sundresses and giant smiles on their faces. At first I couldn't tell who it was, and then it hit me.

The photo was of my aunt, and my mother. I couldn't believe that I had forgotten, even for a second, that my Aunt Joan was not just my aunt, but also my mother's sister. Joan and Claudette. It was hard to picture them as young girls, even with the photo right in front of me. My mom would've been the older one. I looked at her picture, finding it difficult to meet her eyes.

Then it hit me, and I sunk to the floor slowly with the painful realization that the person my aunt had reminded me of had been my own mother, and the even _more_ painful realization that I hadn't been able to remember that.

I just sat there for what seemed like a long time, but I knew it really wasn't, mainly because of the microwave timer that went off, beeping annoyingly to inform me that really only about a minute had gone by. After I retrieved my pizza pocket and taken a massive bite out of it, I sunk back down to the floor, and sat there again, with silent tears rolling down my cheeks and into my breakfast. Yes, it was as lame as it sounds.

Once I was done with my tear stained pizza pocket, I stood up and washed my face at the kitchen sink, although I was pretty sure that my cheeks were still puffy, and my eyes were still red.

I sighed, _I guess I'll just see what's on TV…_ I decided, looking at the clock (–2:48, I can't believe I slept in that long!) and hoping that my aunt wouldn't come in too soon. I turned on the television and was looking through the channels when I began to wonder why there was a bell ringing. It took me a few more minutes to realize that someone was actually at the door, ringing the door bell, and waiting for me to answer. In my pyjamas, with my tear stained face, crazy hair, and over all distaste for most people in general, I opened the door. And gasped.


	4. Chapter 4

I opened the door, and was shocked to see an extremely tall boy with blonde-ish hair. He looked up at me kind of surprised, as if he really hadn't been expecting anyone to answer the door—or at least, no one that looked like me—and then grinned.

"Hi, my name's Seth Clearwater, my mom kind of, um, told me to bring this to you, since you're new in town and everything… Juliet, right?" he asked, holding a casserole dish covered in tin foil.

I nodded slowly, trying to figure out basically what was happening. No one had come to our new house in Sydney when we first moved in, and they certainly didn't bring a casserole. Plus, _I_ was the only new person in the house—as far as I knew!—and no one had ever brought _me_ a casserole. The whole gesture was a little hard for me to understand, for some reason. Because I was the only new person in the house, was I supposed to eat the _whole_ casserole? Would he be offended if I didn't?

I guess I'd been standing there with my best goldfish expression—eyes wide and mouth open—for a little while, because he asked, "Are you okay?"

I nodded, blushing feverishly. "Um, do you want to, uh, come in?" I asked. That was what you said when someone came to your house, bearing food, wasn't it?

I was pretty sure—hoping, even—that 'Seth' would just decline and walk away, but instead he grinned and said, "Sure."

Awkwardly as ever, I stepped aside and let him in. At least the house was clean, thanks to Aunt Joan, I'm sure. I sat down on the couch in the living room, gesturing for him to sit too, not really having any idea what to say, or do. "Uhhh, so, how old are you?" I asked, and automatically regretted it. Great, now I sounded either like a really old lady who couldn't tell the different between a thirteen year old and a twenty year old, or a stalker.

Luckily Seth actually answered, rather than saying something like, "What the heck? Crazy stalker girl!" and stormed out like I somewhat expected him to. Instead, he calmly said, "I'm sixteen, how about you?"

"I'm sixteen too!" I said, smiling slightly. "So, will I be going to the same school as you?" Yeah, smart Juliet. Because he so knows everything about the school system. Definitely the right thing, and person, to ask.

"I go to the school on the rez," he said, shaking his head.

"The _rez?_" I asked, and it probably sounded like I was entirely disgusted by what he just said, when in reality, I just had no idea what it stood for.

"Reservation," he said, raising his eyebrows a bit.

"Ooooh," I said, before adding, "Sorry, I'm horrible with abbreviations."

He grinned a little, and I felt like kicking myself. If I could've, believe me, I would've, but I didn't, because breaking my left in front of Seth would've just heightened him thinking of me as an idiot.

"Uh, um, can I get you some tea, or something?" I asked, glancing outside to where it was pouring rain once again.

"No thanks, I'm good." He said, before explaining, "It's always like this here."

"Oh, okay. I should really get a car," I said, realizing that my aunt and uncle only had one vehicle, and I definitely didn't want to walk to school in the rain.

"You should talk to my friend Jake," Seth said, his eyes lighting up for a second with an expression that I couldn't name. "He knows cars."

I nodded as if I had any idea what this was supposed to mean. _He knows cars._ Like, he was a mechanic?

"I'd better go," Seth said suddenly. "It's my turn to go on patr—uh, work. My shift starts soon…" he said, cutting himself off before he could finish saying whatever he had meant to.

I nodded again and stood up, before following him to the door. While he put on the shoes that I hadn't realized he'd actually been wearing, or he'd taken off. Actually, looking at his clothes, I was shocked. He was wearing a plain t-shirt and jean shorts. "Aren't you cold?" I asked, shocked.

"No, not really," he said, laughing a little like it was a joke.

I nodded—that was about all I seemed to be able to do—still shocked, and moved to open the door at the same time that Seth stood up. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" I exclaimed as he hit his head on my arm.

"It's fine," he said, standing up and laughing a little. My hand touched his arm by accident, and I gasped. His skin was incredibly hot.

"Are you okay? Do you have a fever? Um, do you want to sit down?" I asked him, panicking. Great, I'd probably brought back some kind of foreign, infectious disease with me from Australia, and given it to Seth. The first person, not related to me, that I'd met in Forks, and now he'd hate me forever!

"I'm fine; I tend to have a bit of a high temperature. It's totally normal," he said, laughing a little at my reaction.

"Oh, ok," I said. Great, now I'd made a _complete _fool of myself. "Well, I'll, um, see you around."

"Yup, bye!" he said, grinning again before walking out the door into the pouring rain.

I sighed, and shut the door behind him. "Ugh, I wish I could just be normal," I mumbled to myself and walked back into the living room where I collapsed onto the couch.

I glanced out one of the windows and saw a streak of light brown hair in the woods. It looked almost like Seth, but of course, it couldn't be him, could it? No, he was already gone from the driveway; he had probably started walking back to the "rez". The streak of fur was back, but now it had more of a shape… my mouth dropped open as my own wide green eyes met its brown eyes.

Standing only maybe ten feet from the house, from the window, from _me_, was a wolf. I looked away, breaking the trance like state that I'd been in, and quickly ran to the coffee table where there was a picture of my parents and me from when I was only five or six years old. It was facing the window, so I turned it down. After all that they'd been through, my parents shouldn't have to see another wolf.

I looked up at the window, and it was gone. Before I could say or do anything, the front door was slammed open. I instinctively pulled a blanket over my face. Yeah, it was a pretty crappy hiding place, but the wolf already had me freaked out.

"Hel-loooooo," Aunt Joan called in a sing song voice, before she walked into the living room, dressed in a snappy suit and laden with bags. "Juliet? What are you doing?" she asked, lifting the blanket up off of my face.

"Uhhh, watching TV?" I said, phrasing it as more of a question than a statement.

"Alright, well, do you want to come with me to go get some dinner? Oh, and we should probably go shopping for school supplies too," she said, grinning.

Was it dinner time already? Wow. "Um, what's this?" she asked, putting her bags down in the kitchen and coming back holding the casserole.

"Oh, some kid named Seth came and brought that by. He said his mom made it for him. Do you know him? Seth Clearwater, I think." I explained.

She nodded and said, "Oh, yes, I work with his mom some times."

Before I could say or ask anything else, Aunt Joan was already up the stairs, calling something about getting changed. I sighed. Well, now I was about to see Forks firsthand, and find out whether or not there was more to it than just rain. As I walked out the door to meet Aunt Joan in her small car after having changed, I shivered a little, despite my warm coat (that she lent me), remembering the wolf. Its eyes had looked at me in a way that made me almost feel as if I knew it. But that couldn't be true, right?

We turned out of the driveway, and started in to town when I saw a sign pointing the direction of the 'La Push Reservation', and wondered how Seth could've possibly gotten home as fast as he did, or, if not, just where he was.


	5. Chapter 5

_**I am SO sorry that I haven't published anything in a really long time! I've been studying for end-of-semester exams, having some trouble with my friends, and a whole ton of stupid little things. I'm even more sorry that this chapter is so sucky, I wrote half of it about a week ago (it seems like WAY longer) and the rest just now, so I'm pretty sure it won't flow well, might make Juliet seem really bitchy, and will probably have slightly more 'language' (as seen like, right before this, ha) than I originally intended.**_

_**Hope you like it!**_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight, which is © Stephanie Meyer. Oh my gosh, my computer changed the "bracket C bracket" thing I typed in to something that looks like a real copyright sign! Trippy. **_

"Name?" the lady sitting behind the counter asked me. I leaned forward so that she'd hear my quiet voice, and smelled something that was like a cross between Curious by Britney Spears, and cooked carrots. Mmm, wonderful.

"I'm Juliet Ero," I said, glancing around the office to see if there were any other new students getting their course lists. Nope, didn't look like it.

On this bright, _early_, Monday morning, I was the only one in the Fork's high school office, besides a boy sitting in the corner, who had three tattoos—that were visible—and looked like he was sleeping. He wasn't a new student, as far as I knew, though, because he had a handful of tests all marked with an 'F' in red ink laying on his lap.

"Alright, sweetie, here's your schedule, and would you mind reminding your Aunt about book club tonight?" she said, smiling. Wow, this really was a small town. I wasn't used to everyone knowing everyone, but I nodded anyways, like I knew just what she was talking about.

Once I was out of the office, I looked down at the post-it note that the secretary had stuck to my schedule. It had my locker number, combination, and the email of a peer tutor. I rolled my eyes, and walked down the crowded hall way.

It really was a pretty small school. Small in the way that makes everyone follow you with their eyes—or, literally, _follow_ you—as you walk down the hall, trying to find your locker. True story.

Finally I arrived in front of it, and fumbled with the lock for a few minutes before it finally gave in and opened, revealing a totally empty metal box. My locker. I shoved my books into it, before peering at my schedule.

I was wearing an outfit that my Aunt had both picked out and bought for me. It was a hot pink short sleeve shirt with a black flower on it, over top of a black, long sleeve shirt, and a pair of skinny jeans. I guess it did look sort of nice, but for the most part it was just uncomfortable, and catching the eyes of several students, all of whom seemed to be suited up in sweaters, and jeans themselves.

My schedule was written out like so; first period—Biology, second period—English, third period—home ec., fourth period—lunch, fifth period—math, sixth period—social studies.

I groaned, this would be a fun semester. At least I had English, one of my favourite courses, and home ec might not be that bad, but as for all of the rest of my classes… I wasn't exactly looking forward to them.

Before I could even begin to fully dread my first class, however, the bell had gone, and I diligently marched to class, trying to avoid as many of the stares I was shot as I could.

As soon as I had arrived in the class, I realized that most of the students were older than me. Actually, it looked like all of them were. I couldn't be in a class where everyone had failed, could I?

"Oh, you must be Miss Ero, welcome to Biology eleven," the teacher said, glancing up from some papers he'd been shuffling through.

"Um, um, thank you, but, um, I'm actually in tenth grade…" I said, slowly, as I scanned the room hoping for any sign that this might not be some kind of cruel twist of fate. I had been dreading Biology—my least favourite subject, even though I wasn't all that bad at it—enough without being in an older class!

"Ah, it seems that your marks in this class were above average, and the board of education decided to try you in an older class," he explained, barely glancing up from what I could now see was my 'file'.

Of course I had gotten good grades in biology; I had studied it every evening for at least an hour back in Australia, trying to keep my grades at a passing level. I had actually somewhat been looking forward to coming to America and no longer having to deal with that. Guess I was wrong.

"You can take a seat over there," he said, still not looking up. He was pointing to the only empty table, although I had no idea how he could do that without looking up.

I nodded slowly, and started to make my way over to the table—which wasn't exactly empty anymore. Somehow in the time it had taken me to turn around, two people had entered the room and sat at what was supposed to be my table. Wow, I didn't think I was that slow.

I looked back at the teacher, but he was apparently engrossed in taking the attendance, so I took a deep breath and stopped in front of their table. "Um, hi, sorry, I was supposed to sit here…" I said, quietly.

They both turned to look at me, and I was struck by just how beautiful they both were, in very different ways. Sitting furthest from me was a guy who looked about a year older than me—well, duh—and he just might've been the most gorgeous looking person I'd seen in my entire life.

He had slightly messy hair, the perfect face—no other description needed—and the strangest looking eyes… they were a really, really dark brown, almost black…

"Oh, of course, here," said the other person at the table, grabbing a chair and drawing my attention to her. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and a nice smile.

I nodded slightly, and took a seat. "I'm, um, Juliet," I said, slowly. They seemed like nice people…

"Bella," said the brown haired girl, smiling, and when the boy didn't answer, but rather just stared straight ahead, she said for him, "He's Edward, sorry, he's not feeling well today."

They shared an almost conspiratorial look that made me feel as though I was interrupting something incredibly personal. In response, I just nodded, and took a seat on my chair. I looked around and saw that a lot of the seats were empty.

"We have about five more minutes until class starts," Bella said, almost as if she'd read my mind… but, that wasn't possible, was it?

Before I could ask why they were here so early, a group of loud guys came walking in the door, laughing boisterously. "Hey Bells, who's your friend?" asked the first boy through the door.

I closed my eyes, wishing that I wasn't there, and missed whatever Bella said, but by the time I'd opened my eyes again he was in his seat at the other end of the classroom. I shot her a thankful smile, but she was too deep in conversation with Edward to notice.

I realized suddenly who he reminded me of. He looked a lot like the beautiful people on the plane. Could they be related? They looked too young to have kids his age though. I rested my head on my hand, letting my hair fall in front of my face so that no one could see me closing my eyes.

All of a sudden, before I even knew what was happening, I felt the wall that I'd built up in my mind so long ago falling apart. I could hear people's thoughts again.

_She's so hot, I wish I could just—_that sounded like the guy who'd entered earlier. Mike, I think Bella said his name at some point. I stopped listening then, not really wanting to know whatever else he was thinking.

I played around a little, for a few moments forgetting why I'd stopped reading people's minds in the first place, and then it hit me;

_God, look at the new girl, she looks like such a loser. This is going to be fun. _I didn't even try to figure out who that was coming from, I just buried my head further in my hands, wishing that I had just stayed ignorant and the voices in my head—wow, that sounds like I'm crazy!—had just stayed shut up for a while longer.

The teacher was still sitting at his desk, but now I knew that instead of marking papers he was discreetly scanning over his matches on one of those internet dating sites, and wishing that his students would stop coming in early.

The girl sitting at the table in front of me had just had sex with her boyfriend and was afraid that he was going to leave her, and the boy sitting next to her was trying to finish his Spanish homework.

It was almost like a crash course in knowing everyone around you. I could already probably name about half of the class without ever having actually met them. I guess a power like mine could actually be fun. Too bad I wasn't really a 'fun' person.

Just as I felt that my day would've been infinitely better had I stayed at home, something very strange came into my head; _Juliet? Can you hear me?_

My eyes widened, and I pushed the hair out of my face, trying to figure out whether I had just imagined that, or something very strange had just happened. It was a deep voice, but not too deep. In fact, it seemed like it would almost suit the guy—Edward—who was looking at the table with a somewhat vacant expression.

Everything about him just seemed so mysterious… oh, who was I kidding, weird eyes? Vacant expression? 'Not feeling well'? He was probably just stoned, or something like that.

_I am __**not**__ stoned, and you are not imagining this either!_

What. The. Hell.


	6. Chapter 6

**I felt bad for my very poor previous chapter, so I wrote this! It's still nothing particularly good, but I spent a lot more time on it, and at least it's a bit longer. I have three tips to make your life better, okay? Listen up. 1) Go hug your mom (or someone else, if that doesn't work) 2) Listen to Metric. And 3) Cry more often. Sorry, I'm really bored, and that's all, yay! I hope you like it.**

**_Disclaimer: If I owned Twilight, then I would be Stephenie Meyer, which I'm not. That would be totally *whoa*. _**

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Edward whispered something to Bella, and her eyes widened, before she turned to stare at me. Never before had I felt as much like a specimen as the small animal we were supposed to be dissecting today.

This feeling only worsened when, try as I might, I couldn't hear any more of Edward's thoughts. Of course, I could've taken this information and realized that Edward was about as normal as I was, but instead it just made me feel more alone.

I stayed quiet through the lesson, taking notes but not really digesting any of the information. Of course I should've tried harder, given that all of the stuff I'd be learning was going to be above my grade level, but I couldn't seem to focus.

Instead I busied myself trying to listen to Bella's thoughts, trying to make some contact with someone, anyone, whose thoughts I felt might not totally either bore or freak me out. That was when I heard him again.

_Stop trying to read Bella's mind. _

Without even thinking about it, I nodded, and stopped concentrating on the brown haired girl who sat in between Edward and me, holding his hand underneath the table. We were both freaks, and by being able to sit next to him, she was one as well.

_How did you know…? _I thought, hoping that he'd be able to hear my thoughts as well. I didn't want to add the other, ugly words that we both knew followed in my mind. _How did you know that I could read their minds? How did you know that I can hear their thoughts? How did you know that I'm such a freak?_

_Come sit with us at lunch,_ he replied, not answering my question. _I'll tell you more then._

It isn't a real invitation, and I don't feel by any means that I'm making a friend. I am being invited so that I will stop trying to hear his and his girlfriend's thoughts. So that I'll stop looking wide eyed around the room like an idiot, trying to figure out who's thinking about whom. That's not the case though, is it? It wasn't an invitation, it was a command.

I stayed quiet through the rest of biology and all of my other subjects as well. Not until English did I speak when the teacher asked me to introduce myself.

"My name's Juliet Ero, it's nice to meet you," I said.

"And where are you from?" the teacher, Mrs Claire, asked me.

"Australia," I said, grudgingly.

Someone mumbled something about that being a lie. I don't have an accent. But I do, and they can't possibly understand how much I wish that I could just abandon my fake American voice and speak with the accent that I was born with. That, however, would mean standing out, something that I cannot bring myself to do.

I hunched over in my seat over my paper, feeling naked as though the whole class could see right through me. I recognized a few of the students in my class from biology, and several of my other subjects. I guess it was a small town after all.

Try as I might, now that the wall in my mind had broken down, I couldn't help but hear everyone else's thoughts. They flooded my head, making it nearly impossible for me to focus on the grammar work we were supposed to be doing.

Imagine, for a second, being one of those people who can 'hear voices'. You feel that your head is about to burst with all of the disembodied people telling you to do things, and when you tell someone about it, they automatically think you're totally nuts. That's about how I was feeling.

I couldn't even begin to tell whose thoughts belonged to whom, which was frustrating, and a little scary. For instance, when _from Australia? Please. What a freak. Guess I'll have to be nice to her though, if I want a shot at that good-citizen scholarship… _came into my head, I was itching to whirl my head around and start searching the classroom, but I didn't want to give whoever it was anything else to think about.

"Mrs Claire?" I asked, shooting my hand into the air.

"Yes, dear?" she asked. So far, from what I'd seen, she'd been calling everyone 'dear'. It was nice, in a bit of a too-young-to-be-one-but-still-acts-like-a-grandmother kind of way.

"I have a really bad headache," I said. Wasn't that the truth. Luckily for me, someone dropped a book on their desk, making a banging sound and giving me the perfect opportunity to wince and illustrate my point.

"Oh, poor dear, well…" she began with a look of sympathy on her face. I guess Mrs Claire really was a good person. "…As soon as you finish your grammar, you can go." A good person, yeah, but still a teacher.

I nodded feverishly, and bent over my work. I only had two more questions to finish, and I did in near record time. Grammar never was my strong suit, but even I surprised myself with how quickly I finished, grabbed my stuff, and pelted out the door. Ok, bit of an exaggeration.

I made my way to my locker, not planning on finishing the rest of the day. I doubt I'd be able to, anyway. I put my books away and gathered a few binders and notebooks in my bag to try and get some homework done when I got back to Aunt Joan's house.

Pulling my iPod out as a second thought, I closed my locker and put the headphones in my ears. I turned the volume up nice and loud to drown out some of the thoughts, or to try to. I'd read about it in some book, and definitely hadn't thought that it would work, but it did help.

_Somebody put me back in school, I forget everything.  
I used to know how to leave the boy behind  
without having to watch him go. *oh*  
Infidel to die for what I am doing  
will happen in the morning when the mirror won't recognize me.  
He holds a certain gesture when we're lovin' to ask each other  
"Do you want it?" "Do you want me?"  
I want it. It is you. You are where I want to be_

I pressed Shuffle, and hummed along to the song that came up. That was, until I walked directly into a wall, or something. Sure, I was new to the school, but I though, at least, that I pretty much knew where the walls were.

I looked up, and saw that it wasn't a wall after all, but rather a person. Edward. "What the heck?" I asked, more to myself than him, pulling my headphones out of my ears.

The thoughts that I'd managed to drown out came flooding back into my head. It was like being a baby again, and having strange words that I couldn't understand come into my head whenever someone came near me. I staggered a bit, before turning and sitting on the rather conveniently located bench against the wall next to me. I sat and put my head in my hands.

"It's pretty overwhelming, I know," Edward said, sitting down next to me.

"I have a headache," I grumbled through clenched teeth. "I'm going home sick."

He raised an eyebrow at me, and said, "You can't go home sick every day."

I fixed him with a glare that didn't really do anything. "You really should meet my family," he said quietly as a student walked by, sending me a jealous look. I couldn't blame them, Edward was obviously hot, but he was also obviously dating Bella. It wasn't that hard to tell.

"Yeah, I'll bet. I'm sure they'd have some interesting thoughts." I said with an edge of bitterness in my voice.

"In case you were wondering, you're not the only, er, abnormal one around here," he said.

"Someone in my Home EC class was planning to beat up another kid after school, with the knife they're hiding in their locker. I don't think about doing stuff like that, but because I know that other people do, it makes me just as screwed up as them," I said, glaring.

"You should come over for dinner, maybe tonight," he said, almost as if I hadn't said anything. "Bella'll be there, so at least someone will be eating."

"What do you mean?" I asked. First he could tell I could read minds, and now he didn't eat?

"We're uh, on a very special diet," he said, almost laughing at his own words. Before I could press him about it, a new voice came from down the hall.

"What are you two doing out of class?" it was a woman's voice, and, by the sound of it, a teacher.

"Miss Jacobs, I'm so sorry, but unfortunately Miss Ero here isn't feeling well, and got a little lost on her way to the office. I was just on my way to class when I stopped to

help her out." He spoke so smoothly without skipping a beat, that I almost believed him.

"Oh, my, well, I hope you feel better soon, Miss… Ero, was it? Well, have a nice day," she said, becoming flustered, and hurried down the hallway.

It appeared that no one could escape Edward's charm.

He shrugged, and said, "It comes in handy."

Almost instantaneously, he realized what he had said, and _I_ realized what I _hadn't _said. "How did—" I began. Of course I wasn't as shocked as maybe some people would've been, as I could read minds myself, but it's like having a glow-in-the-dark nose, and then finding out that someone else does, and asking them how that's possible, even though you know it has to be, given that your nose glows in the dark as well.

Ok, bad example.

"I really think you should come to dinner tonight," Edward said, standing up as he said this, and beginning to walk away.

"But—" I began, standing up before realizing that he wasn't about to answer any of my questions. I slumped back down on the bench, and mumbled, "I don't even know his address!"

He stopped, about halfway down the hallway, and said, "That won't be a problem."

I stared at him, and continued staring as he made his way down the hall, and around a corner. While I had been talking to Edward, for some reason I'd been able to ignore some of the thoughts, and now I had to stuff my earphones back into my ears, and turn up the volume.

I looked around, trying to figure out where the office was supposed to be, and suddenly my thoughts turned to Seth. For some reason in that instant the color of the wall that I was walking beside looked exactly the same color as his unmistakable hair. The same color, I now realized, as the wolf I'd seen from the living room window…

Before I knew it, I'd signed out of the school with the secretary, and was on the phone, trying to get a ride home from my Aunt. Even though it was a small town, I was pretty sure I'd be able to get lost.

It rang once… I wondered what I'd do if she wasn't there. It rang twice… I wondered what I'd say to her if she was… Three times, and I heard my Aunt Joan's familiar warm voice come bursting through the phone. I explained to her what had happened, and she agreed to come and get me, before saying good bye and hanging up. I put the phone back on its receiver, and walked out the door, leaving the school that I'd only managed to deal with for half a day behind me.

Edward was right, I wouldn't be able to go home sick everyday. That reminded me about what I was going to be doing tonight. I was going to be having dinner with the Bella, the brown haired girl, Edward, the boy who could tell what I was thinking, and his family, who're all on a 'special diet'. And I was somewhat looking forward to it.

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**The song on Juliet's iPod is "The Twist" by Metric, hence my number two instruction, haha. Thank you for reading--or at least scrolling down!**


	7. Chapter 7

**EEK! I was _inspired_. While trying to force out a quick installment for my 'Six Feet Under The Stars' story, which I had little to, well, basically _no_ ideas for, I was suddenly completely, utterly, inspired to write a chapter for this story instead. It's actually kind of long, and I'm very proud of myself. *grin***

**By the way, just a note about my 'Valentines Day' one-shot about Seth, it _is_ a one-shot, so as completely amazingly thrilled as I feel whenever I get an email about someone adding it to their 'story alert' pages, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to continue it. It was totally fun to write though, and Seth is an awesome character, so, yeah... I wholeheartedly encourage anyone and everyone reading this to write their own Seth story. And make it good. I wanna read it :P**

**Hope you enjoy, I actually put some real time into this chapter--gasp! A totally new concept for me!--and had to minimize my windows several times lest my dad manage to read little snippets about Edward and Bella, so I hope you appreciate all of that! Haha, just kidding. Oh, by the way, I've decided that after all of those chapters that didn't really mean anything to the story (besides where she meets Seth. That had everything to do with the story. The story about how much I love Seth, that is) I'm going to hydrate frequently, take a shower (not that I don't do those things regularly already, just so you know) and power through the little details so that I can get some JACOB in here! Please enjoy my little reference to him! :)**

**--Oh my gosh, I'm writing SO much!--**

**Oh, just a tiny little thing, my friend and I are being vegetarian for February [actually before hand as well], and you're welcome to join us! VEG-FEB! Whooo! That is all.  
**

_**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns all. Haha. I saw this as a Disclaimer for an 'Outsiders' story (awesome book so far, even though my reading of it is technically mandatory, you should read it if you haven't already!) and it made me laugh.**_

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"How do I look?" I asked my Aunt after one more look at myself in the mirror. I had no idea what to wear tonight, but luckily Aunt Joan was only too happy to help. She didn't even seem to mind that I'd left school early. As she put it, "It's not like I haven't skipped a few classes in my day."

"You look beautiful," she said. Normally were someone to say that, I'd automatically assume they were joking, but she sounded so genuine that I couldn't help but feel a bit better about myself.

I looked over my attire. I was wearing a long sleeve black shirt, over top of which was an old T-shirt that Aunt Joan had found in the back of her closet. The picture and words on it were so faded that they were basically unintelligible, but it was a nice turquoise color. I also had a tan skirt that had a lot of basically useless pockets and went down to just before my knees.

"Thanks," I said, smiling as I applied some chap-stick. It wasn't like I wanted to look _really_ nice or like I was trying to hard, but I did want to look semi-approachable, given that this was the first time I'd really be officially meeting anyone.

"So, you know the Cullens, right?" I asked, trying to sound casual.

"Hm, I do, I suppose. Carlisle—Dr Cullen—works at the hospital not too far from where I work. I met him once, last year, when I… fell down the stairs." She stopped herself from saying whatever it is she'd originally meant to say, making me wonder where exactly my Uncle Mo had been this whole time.

"Here, this'll go well with it," she said, handing me a black trench coat. "Oh, and when are you supposed to be headed over there?"

"Um…" I began. I didn't exactly want to tell her that rather than really being asked, I'd more been demanded to come, and I really didn't want to tell her that I had no idea when I was supposed to go, or when whoever was going to come and get me would, well, come and get me.

"I wonder who that is." Aunt Joan said, thankfully cutting my non-existent sentence off as someone knocked at the door.

She walked down the stairs and to the door, with me following shortly behind. She opened it to a smiling Bella. "Hello, Mrs. Davis, I'm Bella Swan. I'm here to pick up Juliet."

I was astounded at how good a first impression she'd managed to make on my aunt. "I'm all ready to go," I said, more to make my aunt realize that I was standing behind her than anything else. I slipped the jacket on and put on my tan boots—the only thing that'd really work to keep me safely dry outside where it was pouring rain.

"Of course, take care, Juliet," Aunt Joan said, shooting me a glowing smile that made me suddenly feel very guilty for leaving her alone on a cold, wet, Monday night.

"Bye, Aunt Joan," I said, leaning forward and kissing her on the cheek in a way that would've made me feel very awkward with anyone else but for my wonderfully kind aunt.

I smiled lightly at Bella, who grinned, stepped out of the way, and led me to her truck. I shut the door behind myself, and followed her to the red, somewhat rusty vehicle that she seemed very proud of.

"Um, Bella?" I said, as soon as we'd both climbed in, done up our seat belts, and she'd started driving. I was trying my hardest not to read her mind, although it was definitely difficult. I'd discovered that I could just let all of the thoughts flooding into my head smudge together; it was easier to not really pay attention to any of them that way.

"Yes?" she asked, stopping at a stop sign before turning left past a group of people who looked about our age walking around the corner.

"Um, Edward and the Cullens, he said they were on a 'special diet', and I was just wondering, I know this'll sound totally ridiculous but…" I began, not even knowing where to begin, but I couldn't help but feel nervous about the incredulous thought that had popped into my mind as I finished getting ready.

"What is it?" she asked, her eyes flicking from the road to me with a very concerned look in them.

"They don't eat people, or anything, do they?" I asked.

Bella was silent for a moment, before she started coughing. My eyes widened, I was really hoping that what I'd said hadn't been true, but… It took me a few more minutes to notice that her coughing had turned to laughter.

"Wow, Jake would really appreciate that one," she said after she'd finally finished laughing, smiling sadly.

"Um, I'll take that as a no?" I asked, somewhat confused.

"That's a no," she said, a few giggles breaking into her voice as she spoke. "In fact, you could almost say that they're vegetarian."

We didn't speak again until she stopped her truck just outside of a really large, really nice, modern looking house that was just on the outskirts of town. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Edward appeared and opened her door.

They looked at each other with googly, in-love eyes, which made me feel a little like throwing up. It wasn't that they weren't sweet, or anything, but still. Having a third wheel wasn't very fun, unless you were riding a tricycle.

_Very original._ That was Edward's voice, although I still didn't know why I could hear his thoughts so distinctly, or how exactly he knew what I was thinking, but I didn't decide to take this opportunity to ask.

_Follow me_. He took Bella's hand and led her—with me following behind like some kind of lost puppy—up to the large front door, which he opened and help open while she and I entered the house.

Bella slipped off her shoes, and it was clear that she'd been here before. Me, with my awkward, shy streak emerging at just the right time, as always, I slipped my boots off as well and placed them next to hers.

"You must be Juliet!" I was hardly through the door when a short, black haired, pixie-like girl, came running up to me, grinning.

"H-hi," I said, quietly, my cheeks turning red.

"I'm Alice!" she exclaimed.

I smiled slightly, still feeling incredibly embarrassed. A few more people appeared in front of me, introducing themselves warmly.

A lady with brown hair was in front of me with a kind smile, she introduced herself as Esme. Next came a blonde man who held his hand in hers. He was Carlisle. Then there was a big guy, not big as in overweight, more 'big' as in he looked like he hit the gym at least a few times a week, but not like some of the guys—at least at my old school—who actually did hit the gym at least a few times a week, and always looked like they were trying too hard. That's confusing—his name was Emmett.

Next, clutching Emmett's hand, was an incredibly beautiful girl—oh, I forgot to mention, they were all incredibly beautiful. She was even _more_ beautiful though—with blonde hair. She told me that her name was Rosalie, and walked away with Emmett. It was clear that she didn't want to have to talk to me, not at all because she was shy, but more because she was too good to talk to me.

Then there was Alice, who came up to me again, dragging a blonde guy with thoughtful eyes, and introduced him as Jasper.

All through out this I was standing in the entrance way, trying my hardest not to start hyperventilating. I wasn't used to meeting this many people at once, and ever since I'd been in Australia I hadn't had to. It wasn't like at school, either. Instead of just co-existing with a large group of people for a few hours, I was standing around with a group of people all solely focussing on me—minus Rosalie.

I had to think in short bursts, just trying to keep standing, and smiling somewhat pleasantly—well, I liked to think it appeared that way. It was probably more like a grimace.

My jacket was off—oh man, I really shouldn't have worn this. I look hideous. My hair is screwed up. Stupid rain. Why did I move here again, anyways? Oh right, my parents died…

I dragged my thoughts out of this funk that I was spiralling into, and tried my hardest to focus on Alice, who was apparently telling me something.

"…and you should really come shopping with me sometime. You'll need a whole new back-to-school wardrobe!" she finished whatever thought she'd been conveying to me with a grin.

I didn't have to look any further than Jasper's grimacing face to know that this was not a good idea. "Um, thanks, maybe some time…" I said, trailing off.

Edward whispered something to Bella. I probably could've picked out his thoughts from the haze that occupied on part of my mind, but I felt as though that would be invading his privacy somehow.

Bella nodded in agreement to whatever he'd said, and smiled at me, then Alice. "Why don't we take Juliet into the living room…" she said, letting Alice take the lead.

Alice grinned, nodded, and pulled Jasper behind her as she walked away, and presumably meant for me to follow—which I did. Behind me I almost thought that I heard the 'big' guy, Emmett, whisper something weird to Edward.

"So, new girl, huh. Why'd you bring her here? And what's she think of us?" Of course he wouldn't have asked that, though. That would be totally impossible, wouldn't it?

I couldn't hear Edward's response for Alice was saying something else to me, and Esme was talking about what she'd apparently spent the whole day cooking. For some reason, from the collection of opened cookbooks stacked up on a table near the couch I was sitting on, it didn't appear to me that they cooked very often. The smell wafting out of the kitchen, though, was delicious.

_Why thank you,_ came Edward's voice. I raised an eyebrow. He wasn't even in the room—he and Emmett had disappeared somewhere along with Carlisle.

That was it, I decided, if he felt fine reading my thoughts, even though I had no idea how or why he could, then why was I so ashamed of listening to his? I put a hand to my head, as I suddenly had a splitting headache, but I wasn't about to let that stop me. I gazed around the room as I found the different thoughts to go with the different people. On Alice's mind was something about whatever she and Bella were discussing… Bella was thinking about—no, just because I felt fine reading everyone else's mind, I couldn't bring myself to do the same to her. She'd been nice to me so far, they all had, but for some reason, she was special.

Esme was concentrating on cooking a roast which seemed to be exceedingly difficult and unnatural for her to do. Rosalie was looking at herself in a mirror, thinking some rather unkind things about me…

Aha! I practically glowed with accomplishment as I'd managed to pick out Edward's voice from upstairs, streaming through not his own but someone else's thoughts.

_"We should tell her as soon as possible," Edward said. Yeah, let's tell her, and now before dinner. I got enough of watching people eat at school, for God's sake. Humans could be really gross sometimes._

Emmett's thoughts, I concluded. I could tell it wasn't Edward's voice, and Carlisle definitely wasn't still in school.

_Which reminds me, why do we go to school again, anyways? We might as well get this over with, let her know we're freaks, and then carry on with the evening. I mean, Bella's one thing, but __**two**__ humans hanging around the house? _

It was really weird how Emmett kept referring to humans as though he—they—were something different. Although…

_"Let's just get this over with so that while she's running down the street screaming I can get back to my… business." _

An image of Rosalie as I'd have preferred never to see her came into his mind, making me want to close my own, as he said this.

_"Emmett, you know it's quite a big deal to tell someone that we're—"_

Carlisle began. I could feel Emmett rolling his eyes, but without really meaning to, I was sitting on the edge of my seat, practically screaming at Carlisle to continue.

_"Shh!" _That was Edward. I felt like smacking him on the head for interrupting Carlisle just as he'd been about to say something that I couldn't help but feel was important. _"She's listening."_

"She's listening"? But **I **was listening—or at least I had been. So they'd been talking about me all along? I suppose I really should've known, but I was still rather stunned.

_Just stick around for dinner, I promise that you'll know everything then._ Edward thought, and I was beginning to catch on. It appeared as though I couldn't just read his mind, he had to specifically mean for me to hear certain thoughts. Maybe the same thing worked vice versa.

_Sorry kid, but you're not quite as special as I am, _he thought, and I almost detected a wry laugh in his voice. It was amazing how I could practically envision someone's face, just by hearing their thoughts…

"Alice, would you mind getting Edward and the others? Dinner's ready," Esme announced as she practically floated out of the kitchen and into the living room.

That was something else that I'd noticed, they were all incredibly graceful—and, even though Alice's makeup was a little deceiving, incredibly pale.

Alice nodded, bounced up, and disappeared, while Bella and Esme guided me out of the living room, and into a new room adorned with a long table and many chairs. There were only two table settings, one for me and one for Bella. Everyone else merely sat down in their respective chairs without so much as glancing at the food piled on our plates.

It all looked so delicious, but I was so nervous about whatever it was that Carlisle and the others were planning on telling me after dinner that I could hardly eat. Not wanting to appear rude, I took several small bites of all of the food heaped on my dish.

There was meat, potatoes, vegetables, bread, it was like a feast. A feast that only Bella and I were eating. While I was hardly touching my food, Bella was taking moderately sized bites and had nearly cleared her plate. I was glad that at least one of us was hungry.

I glanced around the table, only to see that virtually everyone was staring at us—although there didn't appear to be much else to do. It wasn't like there was any inspiring conversation going on or anything.

Esme smiled warmly at me when I caught her eye. Emmett was too busy staring at Rosalie—ugh! Mental picture from earlier please abandon my head!—and Jasper had his eyes closed in a sort of meditative trance type thing. Carlisle also smiled. Alice grinned. Edward looked like he was concentrating on something, and Bella was concentrating on her food. Rosalie was scoffing at both of our eating habits.

After a few more minutes, she said that she was finished eating, and we both thanked Esme and the others graciously for the meal, Carlisle cleared his throat, and said, "Perhaps we should discuss this in another room…"

Edward nodded, and everyone stood up before filing through the door and back into the living room. I, for one, was extremely glad as just the smell of food was making me feel a bit sick, I was so anxious.

I sat down on the couch, and Bella sat down next to me, while everyone else just stood. Bella put her hand on my own, smiling in a reassuring way. I was suddenly reminded of sitting in the waiting room of the hospital, waiting to find out if my parents would make it. And then the nurse came out with a sombre expression that made the tears start flowing freely from my eyes, as I already knew what she was about to tell me. "I'm sorry, Miss Ero, but I have some bad news for you."

Only Carlisle didn't phrase it quite that way.

"Well, Juliet, there's something about us that you should know…" I glanced around the room at all of their either concerned, sober, _bored_, or sympathetic looks. Wait, Edward wasn't sympathetic about whatever Carlisle planned on telling me—ugh, I can't _believe_ that he read my mind. What a jerk. I rolled my eyes pointedly in his direction, hoping that the others wouldn't find it rude. A small, sad smile formed on his lips, and I turned my full attention back to Carlisle.

He didn't even have to say it, for as soon as I was focussed on him, and the word came into his head, I couldn't help but say it out loud, if only to make sure that he wasn't joking.

"Vampires?!"


	8. Chapter 8

**It's long! I'm happy! You should be too! I wrote this instead of working on a science project, so you better feel grateful! Ha, just kidding, in fact, I probably would've been fine working on basically _anything_ instead of my science project. Circulatory system model? Blah. I hope you like it, I kind of do (she says, oh so humbly). Enjoy! :)**

**PS: tomorrow's Monday, so I probably won't be able to write much over the next few days. Luckily it's only a four day week for me, but un-luckily, I have exams! *gasp* So sorry if I don't update for a while! Having only one story to concentrate on seems so easy, I feel so guilty, haha. OK, BYE!**

**_Disclaimer: All things Twilight belong to Stephanie Meyer. Barrack's how I roll. HA! Sorry, just had to fit it in somewhere! =P_**

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"So, do you have fangs?" I asked Alice, laughing a little but still being completely serious at the same time.

It had been about an hour since I'd found out that the Cullens were vampires, and I guess you could say that I was taking it a lot better than most people would. Maybe it was because I could read minds, so I knew that they weren't joking, or just because _I could_ _read minds_, and so I knew that crazy things like this had to be possible.

Whatever it was, now that I knew, I felt a lot more at ease around them, particularly Alice. That's probably the opposite of how most people would deal with it—being closer with people once you know that they're vampires—but what can I say, I guess I wasn't quite a normal kind of person. We were even joking about it.

"Oh yeah, and believe me, it's murder trying to find a good dentist," she said, laughing a little darkly. She was looking through a stack of movies that had been stored in a small cabinet under their television. It really didn't seem like they watched any TV, or any of the movies much, and I couldn't blame them. I guess if I were a vampire, I wouldn't either. They were all corny horror flicks though, the kind that I really like, and I guess so did Bella.

Alice jammed an old VHS tape into the machine and turned on the television. She tossed the case aside, and I picked it up while she took a seat next to Bella on the couch we were all sitting on.

_"Dracular-Spectacular"_ the title read in bold flashy printing. I laughed, just reading it and looking at the heavily made up man with pale skin and wide eyes, holding a cape up to shield his eyes—posing as a vampire.

"So at school, do you eat lunch? Do you even bring food or anything? Or just tomato juice cans that you mysteriously refuse to share with anyone," I said, glad that I could now speak so easily around them all. Well, most of them.

Alice was grinning, and I could tell that she was definitely the kind of person that I'd want to be friends with. Jasper was there too, although his face was blank. From what I'd been told about his special gift though, I had basically seen that coming.

Edward and I—because of his gift, and mine, which he'd told everyone about (and luckily they accepted me for it)—seemed to be kind of stuck with each other, and even Emmett, whose thoughts I'd been careful to avoid, seemed to be pretty nice.

Rosalie, however, had disappeared almost as soon as I'd been told, and Carlisle and Esme had followed soon afterwards, trying to get her to calm down. That was okay with me though. As much as I wanted Rosalie to like me, or at least to accept me, I was used to people treating me more like she had.

"Before you even ask, yes, I can turn into a bat. But I save that one for special occasions," Alice said, laughing lightly. Her laugh sounded like a symphony—all of theirs did. It made me wonder just how amazing it must be to be a vampire…

Edward's eyes widened slightly, and shot me a pointed look. _It's definitely not all that you might think it is._

Bella glanced quickly from him to me, and murmured, "Did I miss something?"

"No, of course not Bella, love. I think it's time for Juliet to go home no though, don't you? It's almost nine and there's school tomorrow."

He sounded almost like an adult, or a mom, but I knew that he was telling the truth. I hadn't made it through my first day even with a good night's sleep. I saw that Bella knew that he was right, too. Her face softened slightly as they stared at each other, and I rolled my eyes a little, but said nothing.

Alice cleared her throat lightly, clearly used to the two of them being sickeningly in love. Then again, she had Jasper, so there wasn't much that could be said for her either. "I'll drive Juliet home," she said, perking up instantly as soon as the though popped into her mind. That's partly what I liked about Alice—she shared most of her thoughts with the rest of the world, because most of her thoughts were kind, and exciting. She wasn't the kind of person who thought about people one way, and treated them another. She wasn't like me, I guess.

_You shouldn't think like that,_ Edward thought. _It's not true, you know._

I rolled my eyes, even though I would've liked to think that he was telling the truth. _Why don't you go back to staring at Bella?_

A smirk crept onto his face, but other than that he ignored me. "We'll see you at school tomorrow!" Bella said, smiling. Everyone else said some form of 'good-bye' while I slipped on my boots and jacket.

Alice had disappeared, but by the time I got outside I saw her, dressed in a cropped jacket and a pair of flats as well as her other clothes (which I hadn't really noticed before—she was wearing a blue-silver dress that looked a little short to me, but she looked perfectly comfortable in it). Actually, she looked like she'd be really cold, given that it was still raining a little, but I guess that wouldn't matter to a vampire.

As soon as I was in the car—it was a flashy sports car. Definitely not what you'd expect to see in Forks—I buckled up my seat belt, and as soon as Alice started driving, I was glad that I had.

We arrived at my aunt's house faster than I'd ever thought humanly possible. Ha, _humanly possible_. I crack myself up. If only Edward was here, of course he'd appreciate my hilarity.

I rolled my eyes at my own stupid thoughts, and let myself out of the car. My legs were actually a little wobbly as I tried to make my way over to the door. "What can I say," Alice said, grinning, "I don't like to go slow."

Then she developed a very strange look, almost like she was seeing something that I couldn't, something that wasn't there. I tried to follow her gaze, and saw that she was staring with her weirdly empty eyes at the side of Aunt Joan's house. Actually, come to think of it, she was staring right at my window…

Oh! I suddenly remembered what I'd been told about Alice's gift. She could see the future. But what did that have to do with my window…?

"Alice?" I said, shaking her arm a little. She was really starting to freak me out. "Alice, are you okay? What do you see?"

She was quiet for a few more minutes, and for some reason I couldn't help but wonder if she was broken. Not broken like, insane, but rather broken like a child might brake a toy. For some reason her small frame and pale skin reminded me a lot of a doll—she seemed really fragile.

_Oh come on. You're just like Bella. Believe me, Alice is fine, and she can look after herself._ That was Edward. It was amazing that he could access my mind from so far away, but I wasn't really all that surprised.

I tried to calm down, and a few moments later Alice took a deep breath, and shook her head. "You okay, Alice?" I asked her a little shakily.

She nodded, and said, "I'm fine," although she didn't seem quite as—dare I say it—'perky' as she had earlier.

"Alice, what did you see?" I asked a little hesitantly, not knowing for sure if I really wanted to know what she had seen.

She was silent for a moment, which _really_ freaked me out, but then she turned to me and smiled—although I couldn't help but notice that it was a little shaky. "Oh, n-nothing," she stuttered. I was hanging on her every word, or more like her every mistake, trying to figure out what was going on. "I really have to get back to ask Carlisle about something."

She looked from me, to the house quickly, and then made a motion for me to wait where I was. She walked over to my aunt's house and was back a few minutes later. I didn't even begin to wonder where she'd gone, or what she'd done.

She walked back around and opened her car door, slipping in. Whether she forgot about my _gift_, or just didn't really care, I could distinctly hear her thinking, _Ugh, I don't know what to do! Why do those stupid dogs have to pick tonight to show up?_

I jerked my head away, not even really realizing that it had been inclined before. I really hoped that by 'dogs' she meant, literally, dogs. A few adorable puppies storming the house just before midnight might actually be a little fun. I was pretty sure that that wasn't what she'd been talking about.

Before I could think to ask her about it, Alice had zoomed out of the drive-way just as fast as she'd driven here, leaving me to open the door and walk in, still slightly scared.

There was a note sitting on the coffee table when I got into the living room, looking for Aunt Joan. My boots were sitting by the door, and I neatly folding the coat and put it away before picking up the piece of Hello Kitty stationary and examining it.

**_Hey Juliet,_**

**_I hope you had an amazing time, I'm sure that you did. Sorry that I'm not awake—and sorry about the paper! It's the only thing I could find!—but I have an early morning tomorrow. Go to school if you feel up to it. If not, I'll see you at lunch. Have a good sleep, darling!_**

**_—Joan _**

I smiled. I guess after all that had happened, I was pretty lucky to end up with someone like Aunt Joan. I took the note and stuffed it in my pocket before making my way up to my room.

For some reason, after having been at the Cullen's, I was really glad of everything that I had… maybe it was because virtually all of their families—well, their blood families—were dead. It made me feel a little sad to think of them that way, and a _lot_ sad to think of myself that way, so I tried to drag my thoughts away from it.

Aunt Joan was sleeping alone in her bed. She wasn't dreaming about anything in particular, but rather a lot of flashing images. It hurt my head to try and focus on, so I turned to my dresser to grab some pyjamas.

I didn't really know what Aunt Joan did for work, and thus why she needed to come in for an 'early morning'. I would have to ask her about that some time… I'd also have to ask her about where Uncle Mortimer was—although I felt a little bad making her talk about it. For some reason he didn't really seem like the best subject.

I sighed, and took a book off of my shelf at random. I hadn't had much packing room for my extensive book collection, so I'd basically only brought my favourite to America with me, all of which I'd read several times. I would also have to ask Aunt Joan if she knew of any good bookstores nearby.

It was the first Harry Potter book. Admittedly, maybe I was getting a bit old to still enjoy Harry Potter as much as I did, but I couldn't help it. I cracked open the book to the beginning, and started reading.

I had gotten up to the point where Harry was sorted into Gryffindor when I fell asleep. It was some time later—well, actually 1:26 AM, I checked my alarm clock—when I woke up. The book was still laying open on my stomach, so I picked it up, closed it, put it on the shelf, and rubbed my eyes, wondering why I'd woken up in the first place.

Normally I was a very sound sleeper. It was the only time that I could really get away from everyone else's thoughts, so I liked to savour it. Or, at least, I had in the few years that I actually listened to their thoughts. This time, however, I couldn't come up with any reason.

That was before I heard the footsteps.

It was just like the beginning of a horror movie. You know, the part where our young, helpless, and incredibly naïve heroine just _has_ to go see what the cause of the mysterious footsteps is, and then gets eaten by a giant squid? It's always the _same plot_. Ha.

Anyways, that's what I was thinking about as I got out of my bed and slowly made my way over to my window from where most of the sound was coming. If what I was hearing was correct, they were just walking up to my window, and then…

"Ow! What the hell! Who put that rake there?" someone exclaimed. I smirked despite myself, good job, Alice.

"Shut up, Jake, you're going to wake up Juliet," replied someone else. Oh god, I thought, they know my name!

_OK, Edward, I haven't really been too happy about you reading my thoughts before now, but now I would seriously appreciate some help!_ I thought at the top of my lungs. Yeah, it's just as weird as it sounds.

No reply.

"Oh, I'll wake up Juliet? Sorry if your girlfriend doesn't get her beauty sleep," responded the first voice, and I could practically hear their eyes rolling. Okay, I sighed a little, at least they clearly weren't professionals. That was good.

"She's not my girlfriend!" exclaimed the one who'd replied earlier. I recognized that voice… Seth! Why was he here though?

My fear started ebbing, and I focused instead on listening to what they were saying. "Seriously, Jake, even if she had a meeting with the Cullens, we don't know if she's one of them," said a new voice.

Jake…? Hadn't Bella mentioned something about somebody named Jake earlier this evening? I couldn't remember, although it did sound familiar.

"Well, we should at least make sure," I was beginning to recognize their voices now. That was 'Jake', and there was also Seth and the other boy. By the sound of their voices, they didn't sound much older than me, but I couldn't be sure.

When no one objected, and I didn't hear anything for a little while, I quietly picked up an umbrella. I didn't even know what it was doing there, but anything that might work as a weapon was good by me. I also grabbed a flashlight.

If these people thought that the Cullens were at all a threat, then they probably knew about them being vampires—or they were just jealous of Alice's crazy fashion sense. Yeah, I'm _so_ sure that's it—which seemed a little weird, as Carlisle had said that they didn't want anyone else to know.

Because they were just below my window, I crawled across the floor so that I wouldn't be seen. Just because Seth was with them, didn't mean they were good. After all, I didn't even know Seth that well…

_Should we go through the window? Or around to the door? Jake really should've thought this out better. And it's not even raining! Nothing to cover up our footsteps. Man, some real planning must've gone into this._

_---  
_

_Damn it! I hope she doesn't wake up! I don't really want to be here. That's stupid though, I was the one who arranged this—well, technically Sam I guess, but who give's a crap?—that's right, you idiot. You want to see her, to see if she's a leech, but you don't want to see her eyes, because you're afraid that you might imprint on every girl you see, aren't you?_

_---  
_

_Oh man, it's cold. I can usually deal with the cold with the whole werewolf thing going on, but tonight… I dunno, it just seems weird. When I met her I could tell she wasn't a vampire, but not many humans get meetings with the Cullens…_

_---  
_

There thoughts flooded my mind as soon as I focused on them. At least I could tell that there were only three of them, that was a little comforting, but not much. If they were all as big and muscular as Seth, then I still didn't stand a chance—not even with my trusty umbrella.

The first person seemed to be mainly concerned with what they were doing, and that was good, in a way, because at least now I knew that they didn't have that great a plan. I didn't even really want to try and figure out what was going on in the second person's head. Imprint? What was that about?

The last person, Seth, was whose thoughts I focussed on, because he'd said something that really made me wonder. _Werewolf?_ I knew those only existed in books and stories.

I tried to close my mind before I could hear anymore, and snuck out of my room. I made my way quickly and quietly down the stairs, silently thanking my parents for making me go to dance class for a month when I was little, as it had taught me how to walk very quietly. I was out the door before I even truly knew what I was doing, and rounding the corner, coming up to my window where they'd surely be…

Although I couldn't hear much, I could make out their three shapes in the darkness, and decided that surprise was the only advantage I was going to get. I took this to heart, took a deep breath, and clicked the flashlight on, shining it in their eyes.

"Ah! What the hell!" one exclaimed as they all recoiled, temporarily blinded by the sudden change in light.

I quickly took note of what I was up against, the umbrella held steadily in my right hand. I knew this definitely wasn't what you were supposed to do in the event of a home invasion, but I didn't exactly care.

They were all big, and all strong looking, just as I'd feared. The one in the center who had been swearing was the biggest. His voice clicked in my mind—he was 'Jake'. Next to him was Seth, who was now looking at me with a certain recognition, and the third boy had his mouth open.

I looked at myself, for the first time realizing that I was wearing a tight tank top that was basically see through in what little rain was still coming down, giving him a nice view of my black bra, and shorts that were far shorter than anything I'd consider wearing in public. They had originally seemed like comfortable things to wear, but now I was blushing.

"J-Juliet?" Seth managed to stammer while the other two stood basically still. I realized that it wasn't just my clothes, but probably the fact that I was wielding an umbrella above my head like an axe.

I remember his thoughts from earlier, and realized something horribly obvious. Werewolves only existed in stories and books, _just like vampires._

…it was about then that all three of them burst out laughing.


	9. Chapter 9

**Oh wow, I'm a jerk. I'm very, very sorry for my overwhelming jerk-y ways. Shall I list all the ways in which I am a complete and total jerk? OK, here goes. Number one: this is the first chapter I've posted in OVER a week. Number two: it's an INCREDIBLY sucky chapter, basically because while writing it I had basically no idea what it was going to end up like. Number three: I had all of this time (OVER A FREAKING WEEK) to write this chapter, and yet still let it suck. Number four: I _could've_ gotten this out much sooner, and made it into not one but several chapters, which would've probably been better quality, and less confusing. Of course, if you try, you can probably come up with an infinite amount of ways in which I'm a total jerk, but I'd personally prefer if we just left it at that =P**

_**Disclaimer: Twilight is (c) Stephenie Meyer. See that? I don't DESERVE a mildly witty disclaimer. The only thing I do deserve is a giant tattoo across my forehead saying "JERK"--but cheap ink, because I'm not worth the good stuff. SORRY!

* * *

  
**_

"Here, is this good?" I asked Seth, irritation evident in my voice. I'd spent the last ten minutes making hot chocolate for him and the two others boys and he'd spent nearly the whole time hovering over my shoulder in the kitchen while the others sat in the living room, covered in blankets and towels that I'd forced on them. For some reason, I basically automatically assumed that he was inspecting my marshmallow-placing skills. He just sort of seemed like that kind of person.

"Yes, I mean, no, I mean…" he said, shaking his head a little. "I mean, yes, thank you. This looks very good, but it's not like I was watching you or anything."

I rolled my eyes. Yeah, sure. "So, not that I don't like having three guys randomly show up at my house—" suddenly I found myself sounding slightly perverted "—but what are you doing here?"

I had loaded their hot chocolate onto a tray, and way carrying it into the living room as I spoke. "Uh, well, you see…" Seth began.

"That smells good," said one of the two guys sitting on the couch. He reached forward and grabbed a cup as I set the tray down on the coffee table, next to the picture of my aunt and my mom—which I now noticed was still turned, away from the window. The other one just sort of sat there, not really acknowledging my presence.

"I'm Embry, by the way," said the boy who had taken a cup. "And that's Jake."

"Hi," I said, quietly. "I'm Juliet."

Embry grinned, and asked, "As in Romeo and?"

I nodded, and smiled a little. I'd always liked my name. Then I realized that neither of them was wet, but none of the towels or blankets looked like they'd been used in the least.

"How did you dry so fast? It's so cold and wet out; you'll probably get a cold!" I exclaimed suddenly. I rushed over to pick up one of the blankets—a quilt with patches displaying different cartoon characters which I distinctly remembered Aunt Joan making for me when I was younger; maybe not the best choice now—and pushed it at the two.

They were clearly a little taken aback by my sudden actions. Even I was, a little. I didn't think that I really could've helped it though; sick people really freaked me out. It was just enough of a shock that the guy—Jake—who had been either zoning out or just plain ignoring me, looked at me.

…And as soon as our eyes met, as corny as it sounds, it was like we were the only ones in the room.

His skin was dark, and so was his hair, which he had cut rather short. His eyes were a deep brown. I continued staring at him, trying to memorize his features, but at the same time finding it nearly impossible to pull my eyes away from his. Then I didn't have to, because he's jerked his head away, and I realized that my hand was resting against his arm, shooting sparks through my body.

"I, uh…" I began, not really sure what to say. Embry and Seth were exchanging looks that made me think that everyone but me knew what was going on.

_Oh crap, this isn't good, he's going to be pissed, how the h—_

_IMPRINT! I had to go and freaking __**imprint!?**__ I'm such an idiot, I can't b—_

_What the hell? What's up with Jake? And why is Embry looking at me like… Oh, no. Oh, crap. Oh, hell. Oh man, he's so beating me up on the way back to the rez. Oh, crap._

Their thoughts were flooding into my head so fast that I couldn't really tell what was coming from whom. It was almost like they had too many thoughts. Too many memories for just one person each…

"Uh…." I continued, realizing I had been talking. Then I awkwardly pulled my hand back to my side. "Your arm is so hot, are you ok?" I had just stopped myself from saying _'you're so hot'_, but I was pretty sure that the point had come across anyway.

"I'm fine." He grunted.

Embry sighed, looked from Jake to myself, and then sighed again. "Well, I guess I should start. We basically came to ask you about the Cullens. And, um, to save time… are you like them?"

I almost laughed. Was I like them? Did he mean was I beautiful? Was I mysterious? Was I… a vampire? That's what he meant, duh. I almost kicked myself in the head—he'd been pretty blunt about it, too. And now that I'd been pretty much silent for about a minute, he probably thought that I was.

"No, no, I'm not a… a v—" I began, hesitant to say the word.

Before I could finish, Embry cut me off with a quick nod. Then I had to wonder, how did _they_ know? Could _they_ be…? "What about you, are you guys… you know, like them?"

They all gave somewhat wry smiles, and Jake actually coughed out a sort of bark/laugh (and, now that I know better, the whole _bark_ quality to it really should've meant more to me than it did). "No," Embry said as Seth sat down on the chair next to me and took a sip of his hot chocolate. They exchanged glances—Jake was still stubbornly looking the other way—before he continued.

"We're not leeches like the Cullens—" hearing that word used to describe the people that I'd really only just met, but had already begun to feel about as friends, hurt. "—in fact, you could almost say that we're the complete opposite."

There was something in his tone that made me feel like this particular conversation was over, and that I should just drop it, but for some reason I couldn't help but say the first think that popped into my head, which was; "So does that mean that you guys are like, werewolves or something?"

I laughed nervously when they exchanged more glances, and then just shut up when even Jake was included in these weird looks. Finally Embry, the first to react, cleared his throat. "Well, obviously we've got a lot to explain, so…"

The Seth cut in, grinning, "Do you want to come to a beach party, by any chance?"

***

"How do I look?" I asked for the second time in two days, although this time it wasn't my aunt that I was asking.

"You look amazing! I think I may have outdone myself, if I do say so myself… which I do," Alice said, rather confusingly, beaming up from the magazine she'd been reading while she was sitting on my bed.

The rest of the school week had gone by fairly smoothly, and at least with some of the Advanced classes I'd been put in I had the Cullens there to help me out. They hadn't been placed in Advanced classes, even though they easily could've, because they didn't want to stand out anymore than necessary in case anyone were to get even the tiniest idea of what they were. I wasn't quite so lucky.

I had told them all about the w—_guys_ coming to my house that night. Well, not quite _all_ of it. I hadn't told any of them what had happened when Jacob and I had made eye contact—well, I'd told Alice that I had 'had a weird feeling', but that was it—because even I really didn't know what it meant.

'Imprint'. That's what he had been thinking about—at least I presumed that it was him, although I couldn't totally tell, because of all the thoughts that the three had had. I didn't know what that meant, but for some reason it made me think of a photograph. That was kind of how I was now thinking of him. I didn't have a photographic memory, although I'd always kind of wondered what it would be like to have one. And now maybe I knew.

It was like, to me, one photograph in a pile of papers. All of the papers—in this pile that stood metaphorically (because I was _so_ lame) for my mind—were like the normal things I did in my day. Homework, the Cullens, my aunt, stuff like that that was important to me, in different ways. Then there was the photograph, a photo of Jacob, which stood out glossy and colourful, and just begged to be looked at. It was like now that I'd met him, I could get the image of Jake out of my head. I couldn't stop thinking about him. And this is me, who'd hardly even watched a romantic movie.

I could practically feel a sense of corniness radiating off of me, and I was surprised that Alice didn't just crinkle her nose at me and walk away. Instead, though, she had come to my house Friday after school to help me pick out some clothes.

OK, let me rephrase that. She didn't _help me pick out some clothes._ It was more like she—after a quick glance through my closet—had driven me over to her house at near death speeds and had forced me into multiple different trial run outfits until she found one she liked. Yeah, that was much more accurate. Then she'd driven me back to my house to do the finishing touches, at the same crazy speed. There was just something about the whole fast-driving thing that didn't sit well with me.

Now I looked at myself in the full length mirror that I was standing in front of while Alice got up to fix my hair.

I was wearing a pair of skinny jeans and black boots with a dangerously high (okay, so only two inches, but still) heel that Alice claimed were 'functional _and_ fashionable'. I was also wearing a light blue long sleeve shirt, with a red vest over top. I personally thought that this, along with all of the makeup and my 'expertly curled' hair, might be a little extensive for a campfire at the beach, but Alice didn't seem to agree, and I found that I couldn't really change her mind.

Instead I just found myself going along with it, and actually kind of enjoying getting all dressed up. Well, enjoying it until seven o'clock—the time that Seth had said he'd come and pick me up—drew nearer.

"You look great, and you'll have a fabulous time," Alice said, as if she'd sensed my apprehension, and then she muttered something under her breath about _stupid, mangy dogs_, but I didn't ask her to repeat it. "By the way, I'd better go."

I didn't try to talk her into staying because I'd already gotten a rough idea of how little her and the other Cullens liked Seth, Jacob, and the others, although I wasn't totally sure why. I guess if I had tried to find out, or even look into it just a tiny bit more, I probably would've been able to tell, but I guess I more didn't want to.

A few minutes after she had left, there was a knock at the door. I answered it to see Seth standing there, grinning. It wasn't raining for once. I smiled back, and called, "Aunt Joan, Seth's here, I'm going, bye!"

When I'd told her that I had been invited to a campfire out at La Push she automatically filled the role of _annoyingly interested, slightly over protective_ mother-like-figure, and had demanded to know who would be there. Because I didn't actually know for sure—although I knew that she wouldn't want to hear this—I had maybe lied a tiny bit about just how well Seth and I knew each other.

I told her that he went to my school, was in all of my classes, and had helped me out a little bit with some of my Advanced Classes homework. Now she basically thought of Seth as an incredibly kind, nice guy who was looking out for her poor little niece and even liked to throw together the occasional witty remark.

"Alright sweetie, be back before eleven. And Seth, it's nice to see you." She had gotten up so that she was hovering behind me in the hall and shot him a winning smile. I suppose were someone's mom to do something like this, it might come across fairly creepy, but to me it was just a nice, caring gesture, so I turned and smiled back.

Seth waved a little, and then gave me a confused look before leading me out the door and to his car. "What was that about?" he asked once we'd both gotten into the vehicle.

"Uh… she just really likes… people?" I said, having no idea what to say.

He smirked, and said, "Wow, and that's so rare nowadays."

We were silent for quite a while after this. He tried to turn on the radio, but all that came through was static, so he shut it off a short while afterwards.

"So…" he finally began.

"So." I repeated.

"Have you seen any wildlife around your aunt's house recently? Um… usually there's like, wolves and deer and stuff, but I haven't seen any in a while. So have you?" he asked, and it seemed like there was a lot to his question that he wasn't asking me out right.

"I saw a few…" I paused, finding it just a little difficult to get my mouth around the word, "wolves… a few days ago… not that I wanted to."

"Why's that?" he asked, glancing away from the road for a second to look at me.

"I hate wolves," I said flatly.

He flinched a little, and I wondered if I'd said something wrong. Well, obviously I'd said _something_ wrong or he wouldn't have flinched. Maybe wolves were his favourite animals…? What if wolves were like, sacred animals here? Crap! I always did say the wrong thing.

"Why's that?" he asked, repeating his previous question.

"Uh…" I began. I hadn't really expected to have to tell the story tonight, but I also knew that it was entirely my fault that it had come up at all. "They, um… kind of killed my parents."

The car was silent again. Wow, nice going Juliet. Props, as always, for ruining the conversation. I really should've dressed more comfortably if I'd known what an awkward evening this was going to turn out to be.

Then, finally, Seth spoke. "I'm really, really sorry." He said.

"It's not your fault," I said, shrugging, trying to seem casual. Deep down though, I was completely filled with elation that someone here actually cared enough about me to say something like that.

"You know, not all wolves are that bad," he said after a short pause.

I shrugged again, "I don't know."

He looked thoughtful for a moment. This whole ride had been weird. Seth wasn't acting like his usual self—or, at least, what I thought was his usual self as I'd only known him for about a week—and neither was I. Then he said, "you don't have to come to the campfire tonight… they're going to be telling these legends about the tribes here, and stuff, and I'm not sure you'll really want to here it."

"I might as well go; after all, I've just had the most awkward drive of all time, so I want to make it worth something." I said, laughing a little.

"The _most _awkward?" he asked, slowing down now as we approached a beach—our destination, I guessed. "Oh please."

"What?" I asked.

"Well, I can think of at least ten things right away that'd make the whole thing much more awkward," he said, grinning as he parked the car.

"Like?" I asked, not entirely sure I wanted to know.

"Like, for example, if I wasn't wearing any pants."

"Do you often drive around without any pants on?"

"Oh, you'd be surprised."

I laughed. It was nice to be able to talk to someone like this. By this time we both had our seatbelts off, and we were both out of the car. I shut the door behind me a little hard, and Seth winced and said, "Careful, this is my mom's car."

I looked at him, grinning a little, before he grinned and added in a low, macho voice, "Y'know, 'cause my car's in the shop right now. After I totalled the engine. Six times."

I snorted at his comment, and started walking beside him towards what looked like a campfire—although we were pretty far away from it, so it was kind of hard to tell.

"Why are you dressed like that anyway?" he asked, looking me quickly up and down. If he was almost any other guy, I probably would've blushed, or felt that he was checking me out, but for some reason with Seth it was like he was just looking at me. That was all.

"What, you don't like it?" I said in a mock hurt voice.

"Uh, well, uh, I didn't say…" he began before trailing off, clearly afraid that he'd upset me after my confessional back in the car.

"You know the Cullens, right?" I asked, and he looked up a little surprised that my voice was perfectly back to normal again.

"Yeah, I guess," he said.

"Well, this was basically Alice," I gestured at my outfit and grimaced a little.

"HEY SETH! IF YOU DON'T GET YOUR BUTT OVER HERE ALL THE HOT DOGS ARE GONNA BE GONE!" called someone from ahead of us where the campfire was.

It was about 1500 meters (I would guess, although I've always been horrible at judging distances) ahead of us, but the voice was still perfectly clear. "That would be my sister, Leah." Seth said. "Basically, when you're around her, remember to keep everything she says as more like… a rough idea of what she's actually saying. She can be a little harsh sometimes. Do you mind?"

It took me a little while to realize what he was asking. When I figured it out, I replied, "Sure, no problem, go ahead."

He grinned, and sprinted ahead of me towards the campfire possibly faster than I'd ever seen anyone run—in real life at least, so the Olympics on TV don't count—and was already stuffing multiple hotdogs into his mouth by the time I arrived.

"You can sit here, Juliet," I recognized that voice as Embry. He was sitting next to Seth, and it looked like he was done eating. Actually, it looked like only Seth was still eating, and judging by all of the empty food wrappers, the rest of them had eaten a lot too.

I smiled and sat down next to him. Jacob had been sitting on the other side of Embry, but once I got there he'd stood up and moved away—gee, I wonder why? _So_ kind. There were four other boys, and sitting next to all but one of them were girls that looked about the same ages. They were all cuddling together, obviously 'together' together, which made me feel oddly self conscious.

There were also two other girls; Leah, who for some reason I could just tell was here by herself, and a little girl who was sitting on one of the guys' laps. She was cute, but there was something a little odd about her—and in fact about all of the other people. Something about the way that they looked at each other…

It took me a few moments to figure it out. They were all looking at each other with eyes that were completely brimming with love. It was kind of unnerving—and for some reason I felt the overwhelming need to laugh. Instead I covered it up by making a weird coughing noise. Embry raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. My face turned a deep red, and I tried to spend the rest of my time focussing on making as little noise as I possibly could.

It wasn't until now that I realized that not everyone sitting around the campfire was actually roughly my age (give or take a few years). There were a few men sitting at one end of the fire, and one of them was sitting in a wheelchair. Once Seth had finally stopped eating, he began to speak.

At first I thought that he was just going to tell a ghost story, or something silly like that, so I was all ready to zone out. Then I saw the intent looks on everyone else's faces as they were clearly hanging on to his every word.

"You should listen," Seth whispered, suddenly appearing closer to my side.

"You should too!" I protested as quietly as I could.

"Yeah, well, you should _really_ listen," he replied, a weird glint in his eyes.

I nodded a little, perplexed, but turned my head to the man and tried to pick up on what he was saying.

When he mentioned the word 'imprint' I straightened my back a little and leaned closer. Finally a word that I recognized. I saw Embry roll my eyes, and heard Seth snort at my actions, and I just hoped that it wasn't totally obvious that I had suddenly started paying attention.

***

I stayed quiet through all of the legends, and then whispered to Seth that I should probably be going home. He just nodded, glancing around quickly before he agreed to take me back.

I waited until we were both in his mom's car with the doors closed and the radio—he'd finally found a signal and some 80's station was playing Def Leopard—until I finally spoke the one word that had been on the tip of my tongue ever since I'd heard the legends that Billy Black (Jacob's dad, I learned) had been telling. It reminded me a lot of my out burst at the Cullens—it was like déjà vu, but not really. Seth looked at me a little oddly as I practically screamed at him;

"Werewolves?!"


	10. Chapter 10

**DOUBLE DIGIT CHAPTERS! HECK YES!**

**There's a boy who sits beside me in both my Math and Socials classes (thanks to some very cruel teachers), who is a jerk. He saw the beloved "Make Art Not War" button on my bag, and he promptly told everyone sitting near me that I'm apparently a hippie. Of course I guess in some ways I could be, because of the music I listen to, and some of the clothes I wear, but he was very jerk-y about it. And he kept asking me if I was "chasing the dragon", and making weird comments about ET and Free Willy. Rawr, jerk. I basically ignored him, he makes me angry. Anyone got any good tips on making voodoo dolls? Ha, just kidding.**

**_Disclaimer: Twilight=Stephenie Meyer=love. I'm reading a Night World book again. I should really stop doing that. It messes up my writing. U2 is performing at the Grammy's! *hug for Bono*_  
**

"Um, Juliet, do you think you could maybe stop doing that?" Seth asked, careful not to take his eyes off the road as it was pretty dark out.

I ignored him. Ever since he'd confirmed that he, Embry, Jacob, and basically all of the other guys that had been at the campfire—and more—were werewolves, I hadn't spoken to him. Instead I'd spent the rest of the time flipping through the radio channels, trying to find something that was more than just static.

"If you break the toggle off, or like, break the radio, then my mom will—" he paused as if to consider what exactly his mom would do to him, and I raised my eyebrow. "Well, if I said that she'd take away my allowance, would you stop?"

I rolled my eyes, but the big grin on Seth's face when he said it made me smile a little. Then I promptly turned away from Seth so that he wouldn't see my face, and continued repeating to myself what I had been ever since we'd left the beach.

_He's a wolf. Embry's a wolf. Jake's a wolf. They're all werewolf freaks, but they're still wolves. I __**hate**__ wolves. _

"So… what's it going to take to get you to talk to me?" Seth said, and when he received no reply from me he just continued. "You like Jacob, don't you?"

"Seth, shut up."

"HA! You said something. That means I win," he exclaimed, laughing a little.

"And what exactly do you win?" I asked, still trying to repeat my little mantra in my head. It was hard to hate Seth though, he was just so nice.

"Oh wouldn't you like to know," he said, shooting me a mock suspicious look. I laughed a little without really meaning to, and the grin on his face grew bigger.

I was about to say something, but at that moment Seth pulled up in front of my aunt's house. "I'll, um, see you later," I said grudgingly.

"We'll be in touch," he said with a conspiratorial smile. I rolled my eyes, got out of the car, and waved at him as he drove away. I made my way up to the door and dug my keys out of the small purse that I'd snuck with me after Alice had specifically banned any bags with my outfit.

It took me a few moments to find them, and in that time I felt my cell phone vibrating in my pocket. I'd gotten my phone in Australia when I was thirteen years old 'in case of emergencies' or so my mom said, but ever since then my parents had been the only ones to call me. Now I just carried it around in my pocket most of the time, because it never went off in class, and I didn't particularly care if it got stolen—no one called me anyways. So, needless to say, I was totally freaked out when my hip started buzzing.

"Oh crap, don't be dead!" I exclaimed when I tried to pick my phone up and sent it falling towards the ground. It hit the pavement with a painful sounded crack, and by the time I'd picked it up, the call had been forwarded to voice mail, but it was otherwise unharmed.

While I was fiddling with it in front of the door it started to buzz again—but this time I didn't drop it, luckily.

"Hello?" I asked, pressing it to my ear probably harder than I needed to.

"Juliet? Good. This is Alice. We really need to talk to you A-S-A-P. Is tomorrow good for you?" came Alice's voice from the other side of the phone.

"Uh," I paused, pushing some hair away from my ear and trying to figure out what she was talking about. "Tomorrow? What do you need to talk to me about?"

"Well…" Alice paused, and I could hear some voices in the background. Then there was a muffled static-y sound, before someone else's voice came on the line.

"Juliet, this is Edward. Like Alice was telling you, we really need to speak with you." He sounded so formal that I felt myself biting my nails nervously without really meaning to.

"Um, Edward, would you mind telling me what's going on?" I asked, trying to keep the anxiety out of my voice.

"I can't say much over the phone—" oh, how very James Bond of him "—but Carlisle says there's basically nothing to worry about. There's just the tiny possibility that some people…" he trailed off, as if looking for the right words.

"People meaning vampires?" I asked, trying impatiently to help.

"Yes, people meaning that," he continued, sounding the tiniest bit irritated, "some _people_ may want to harm you, well, because you know about us, and because of your ability to read minds."

Well, at least he was being matter-of-fact, I though, shrugging, before I realized that he obviously couldn't see me over the phone. "Ok…" I began, still not entirely sure as to what I was agreeing to. "I'll come to your house tomorrow afternoon. Or, actually, is there anyway I could get a ride? I kind of don't know where it is."

When I'd been driving there with Bella, I'd been more talking with her or otherwise zoning out than paying attention to my surroundings, and with Alice I had been just focussing on not puking, as opposed to taking in the scenery.

I heard a strained sounding chuckle before Edward replied, "Of course. Someone will be there to get you. Oh, and you may want to make sure that all your doors and windows are locked tonight. Good night, Juliet."

With that he hung up, leaving me standing with my keys in my hand, the phone still to my ear, and a _totally freaked out_ look plastered across my face. Then, as if it was planned just to completely scare me, Aunt Joan came bursting through the door with a semi-crazy grin on her face.

"Juliet! I thought I heard you! How was your night?" she asked eagerly.

"It was fine," I said in a sort of strangled voice as soon as my heart started beating again.

"Come on in and tell me all about it, I just made popcorn and I have the first four seasons of Gilmore Girls on DVD," she said, grinning, and added as an afterthought, "Oh, and sorry if I scared you…"

By the time I could assure her that it was no big deal, and that I like to keep a defibrillator in my purse at all times just for things like this, she had already disappeared back into the house. I felt a little bad, as she had clearly been all set on spending this evening by herself, but she seemed so totally fine with it that I had to smile. I sat down on the couch next to my aunt, who had a large bowl of popcorn sitting on her lap. There were DVD's laying across the coffee table, along with several dozen bottles of nail polish.

"Sorry," Aunt Joan began, gesturing at all of the stuff and laughing a little, "this is just normally what I like to do when I have the house to myself."

That struck a cord with me for some reason. So far I hadn't even seen my uncle, so wouldn't she spend every night alone? I tucked my legs underneath myself so I was sitting in a sort of lotus position on the couch. My yoga-enthused old PE teacher would be proud. And then I felt that I just had to ask;

"Aunt Joan, um, if you don't mind telling me… where's Uncle Mo?" I didn't really feel entitled to use his nickname having never met him, but I did just because I hoped that it would make my aunt feel better about answering.

The smile remained on his face for a few moments, before she seemed to digest what I'd just asked her. Then her face became sombre as she thoughtfully placed a few popcorn kernels in her mouth one by one.

"He… uh, he left," she said, turned away from me to read the back of a random DVD.

"You mean he just ditched you?" I asked, not meaning for it to come across so harsh, and then added, "Are you like, divorced?" which probably didn't help at all.

"Technically we're still married, but that's just because the paper work hasn't come through yet," she said, turning to me with a slightly wistful expression on her face which I took to mean that she wasn't totally sad about all of this.

We were quiet for a few more minutes, before I said, "Let's start with season two. I don't like Dean."

She laughed, and said, "Me neither," before putting the DVD in the machine and stretching out on her chair. Even though I had ruined a conversation earlier this evening, I had also avoided making this one any more awkward, so I thought that warranted some good karma.

"Oh, Aunt Joan?"

She made a face, which I took to mean that she either didn't want to talk, or was for some reason suddenly completely disgusted with me. "Don't call me that, it makes me feel so old. How about just _Joan_?"

I nodded, and smiled a little, before continuing. "Do you mind if I lock the doors and windows, and stuff? They were telling some, uh, ghost stories at the campfire…" I said, trying to come up with an excuse, and hoping she'd get the idea.

"Oh, of course. There are just latches on most of them," she said, making no move to help, but I didn't mind. "I just hope you're not too scared. I'm a bit of a horror movie buff."

I nodded, smiling, and stood up. I kept my eyes down, away from the windows, because I was oddly afraid that I'd see something out there. Instead I busied myself with the locks, and concentrated on Joan's thoughts.

_Joan? Just call me 'Joan'? I'm probably the lamest aunt she's ever had. Oh well. Hmm, maybe tomorrow we could go shopping; have some girl time, or something…_

Almost as soon as she thought this, she said, "Hey Juliet, how would you feel about going to Port Angeles tomorrow? Forks is basically the shopping equivalent of a small cardboard box."

I turned my head to face her—or at least the wall blocking me from the living room—and tried desperately to try and come up with some way to still be able to go to the Cullen's without hurting her feelings. In the process, my eyes darted to the glass of the window I'd been trying to lock, and I saw what, for some reason, I felt as if I'd known I would see.

Standing there against a backdrop of tall trees, and a dark sky, was a furry animal that even from this distance I could tell was a wolf. And after hearing the stories tonight, I was relatively sure that it wasn't just a regular wolf, but rather one of the guys from La Push. But who?

Seth's hair was too light to be it… I looked away, shaking my head. This was crazy, _crazy_. I was actually trying to figure out which person that wolf—that _thing_—was, but the color of their hair as people.

"Um, I'm really sorry Joan, but Alice invited me over—you know her, right? She's one of the Cullens—she's really nice, and she said that she'd be able to help me out with math, because I've been having some trouble with some of the formulas…" I said, saying the first thing that came into my head.

I chose Alice because she'd been at my aunt's house before, and I said math because I knew that Joan hated math, and so she wouldn't offer to help.

"Oh, sure, of course. It's great that you're making friends," she replied, and I heard the distinct sound of her putting popcorn into her mouth. I turned away from the window, guilt washing over me, and decided that I should at least spent tonight with her. I walked back into the living room, and took a seat, knowing—did I know? Or was it more like 'thinking'? _Hoping_, even?—that all of the windows and doors were locked.


	11. Chapter 11

**Ouch, this is short, sorry! And it doesn't really make sense... But I had fun with the werewolves, so it's all good, haha. OK, so I've decided to take this opportunity to thank some of the super awesome users who find the time in their crazy lives of being super awesome to review some or even all of my chapters--or just stop by to say something nice and inspirational, and make me smile. =) Again, thank you, thank you:**

**Flatface**

**amycakes (aha, I made a rhyme! ^^ ...sorry.)**

**Tianna MVA**

**LaLa-036**

**FreeSpiritSeeker**

**TheAngryPrincess13**

**TheWinchesterAngel**

**Mistress Persephone**

**amazingly hyperr **

**...And all the guests, and other people whose reviews fanfiction has decided to hide from me, who are really, really fabulous! Thank you! And happy belated Valentines Day.**

**_Disclaimer: Twilight is (c) Stephenie Meyer. Woo-hoo.

* * *

_**

I had fallen asleep to the sound of my aunt's soft, even breathing from next to me on the couch, but when I woke up; I couldn't hear anything at all. Then a voice.

"Morning princess. You sure did sleep for a long time; guess humans are just funny like that."

I lifted my hands to my face, trying to rub the sleep out of my eyes, when I realized that they were bound together. "Yeah, I know, the rope is a little unnecessary, but try telling that to my mate, yeesh," the voice said.

I sat up and realized that it had been a woman speaking to me this whole time. A woman with short blonde hair and an inhumanly beautiful face. She had said something about humans… that must mean that she was a vampire.

"Good that you caught on, must not be a dumb as you look," she said, examining her nails.

"Who are you?" I asked, sitting up as best as I could without being able to use my hands.

"My name's Lily, and my mate Nathan went out to hunt a little while ago. I figured your pathetic vampire buddies might've told you about us."

My eyes went wide. She knew about the Cullens? "Yup, the Cullens—feeding on animals? Gosh, can you say desperate? Anyways, I'm almost a little disappointed that they didn't tell you about us. Of course that means that no one will be around to help you, will they?" there was a weird look in her eyes that made me realize, if I hadn't already figured out that she was a vampire, now it would've been obvious. She looked at me the way a predator would look at its prey.

"Why are you here?" I asked, trying to back up and get as far away from her as I could. Then I noticed that I was alone on the couch, and added, "And what have you done to my aunt?"

"Hm, a little rude, aren't you?" she said, not answering my questions. "Oh well, I guess nobody's perfect. Not necessarily _perfect_, but I must say that you smell amazing. Even with that hint of, hmm, I don't quite know what to call it… that little part of you that's not quite human—but definitely not vampire. The reason why you're able to read minds. It just makes your blood more delicious."

I looked at my wrists in horror, not sure what I would find, and not sure what I was looking for. Did I expect to see two little puncture marks there? Those would be on my neck of course, but I could see my neck—I felt so violated for some reason, afraid that this… _thing_ had been in my blood stream.

"Oh don't worry, princess, I haven't had any. Of course, it was tempting, but I'm full right now. I'd rather wait so that I can savour it," she said, smirking.

That was about when the rest of her little speech from earlier made sense to me. She knew that I could read minds, and that was why it had been so quiet. I hadn't known she was here, because I couldn't hear anyone's thoughts other than my own. I couldn't tell where my aunt was, or what _Lily_ was going to do to me. For the first time in my life, I felt myself wishing I had my gift back.

"So you've finally noticed, huh? Took you long enough. That's my gift, I guess you could say. I can block out other people's powers, and stop them from working—so your freaky future friend _Alice_ won't be able to tell what we're going to do to you, and that hunky human-loving _Edward_ won't be able to read my mind either! Convenient or what?" she asked, and for once this seemed like a question that she wanted an answer to. I refused give her the satisfaction of hearing my voice shake though, so I stayed quiet.

She looked a little put out, almost like a little girl, until I finally said, "What if I'm a werewolf?"

"What?" she asked, and I was glad that for once I had caught her somewhat off guard.

"You said I my blood wasn't quite human or vampire, so what if I'm a werewolf?" I asked, trying to formulate a plan in my head as I spoke.

"Hate to break it to you, princess, but if you _were_ a werewolf, then you'd stink. It doesn't help much that your house reeks of them, though. What did you do, invite them over for a party or something?" she asked, wrinkling her nose in disgust. Why would it smell like werewolves? Seth was the only one who'd come to the house recently—or was he? I mentally crossed my fingers, that someone out there would know that I was gone, and have at least some idea who had taken me.

"No," I said, quietly, before adding, "where's my aunt? Can you please just tell me that?"

"Hmm, terribly sorry princess, but that would ruin the fun," she said, flashing me a smile.

Before I could come up with some way to get information about my aunt out of her, there was a light tapping at one of the windows, and Lily said, "Ah, Nathan's here. It's about time. Hanging around humans makes my skin feel dirty."

"Where are you taking me?" I asked while she grabbed me up by my hands. I knew that it was a pretty pointless question, and I knew that there was no way I was going to be able to get away from her even if I tried, because she was a _vampire_, but I asked and struggled anyways.

Instead of answering me Lily started humming a song, while she grabbed me and tossed me over her shoulder. She continued humming as she walked through the living room and into the kitchen, and then she stopped mid-step and put me down. I thought for a moment that maybe she'd had a sudden change of heart and now wanted to let me go—and of course, I was wrong.

"I almost forgot," she said, lifting some papers off of the table until she found what she was looking for. "I need you to write me a note."

I raised my eyebrows, but said nothing. It was weird how I was so at-ease with a vampire. "What do you want me to say?" I asked rather than screaming in terror like I _probably _should have as soon as I saw her.

"Hmm… something along the lines of; _Dearest family and friends, I've finally found how positively meaningless this pathetic excuse for a life that I've been leading is, and so I've decided to kill myself. Sorry if this is of any inconvenience. Oh, and you're not invited to my funeral._ Good, huh?" she said.

I rolled my eyes, but grabbed the paper and pen anyways. I sat down and started writing, and continued while Lily stood there, tapping her foot. She made me write five different drafts until she was satisfied with it. Aside from the whole creepy-vampire thing, she reminded me a lot of one of my old English teachers, Mrs Sikes, from back in Australia. Oh how proud Mrs Sikes would've been if she could see my much improved penmanship today, I thought as I signed the note.

"Alright, well, that's all done. Where did Nathan…? Oh, he's outside. What a gentleman," Lily said, reading over my letter again and smiling with approval.

I didn't really see how waiting outside a human girl who you're most likely going to kill's house was at all gentlemanly, but I didn't want to question Lily's logic, so I just nodded.

"Ok, awesome!" she exclaimed seeing me agree to her. Again, she reminded me a lot of a five year old girl. A five year old girl who was capable of killing me without much effort. Go figure. "So, we'd better be going."

Without waiting for a reply she pulled me from my chair, lifted me up off the ground, and carried me out of the house. I probably should've done more to resist. If this were a normal 'kidnapping' then I would've scratched her to get some of her DNA under my fingernails for the police. Yeah, I watch too much CSI, but I was pretty sure that in this case scratching her would just make her angry.

Instead I just fell as limp as I could in her death-tight grip, and—this is going to sound crazy—tried to fall asleep. For some reason all that I could think of right then wasn't about my safety, or how much I was going to miss everyone or what was going to happen to me. I was focussed entirely on how tired I felt as soon as I saw the dark figure of a man standing just outside the door, who I assumed was 'Nathan'.

***

"And so I guess that means that x equals…2.5?" Seth said as more of a question than a statement, looking over his messy calculations writing on the chalkboard.

"Nice work, Mr Clearwater, except for the fact that in this case, x actually equals nine hundred and eighty two," his math teacher, Ms James, said dryly.

"Oh," Seth said, looking down while a couple people laughed. Especially one particularly loud person at the back of the classroom.

"Well, Mr Black, since you seem so vocal on the subject, why don't you come up here and try your luck at the infamous quadratic equation?" Ms James said with a small smile on her face—basically the most emotion she ever showed.

"I'd love to, Ms James, I really would, but, uh, see, I think I have a doctor's note about that somewhere," Jacob said, pretending to look through his backpack.

Ms James sighed, before waving her hand in the air to show that he could stop. "Alright then. Mr Ateara, would you mind shedding some light on the matter for us?"

Before Quil had the chance to come up with some excuse, the bell rang, and everyone was out of their seats in an instant. "Alright, everyone, remember your homework. Pages 116 and 118, due Monday!" Ms James tried to call over the sounds of chairs scraping and her students talking.

"Wow, nice job Seth, you were only about _nine hundred and seventy nine point five_ off. New record," Jacob said, in a completely serious voice as he, Quil, and Seth starting walking away from the classroom together.

"What was that? Was that Jacob Black, _the_ Jacob Black, performing a mathematical equation?!" Seth exclaimed in mock incredulity.

"Nah, can't have been," Quil said, looking up as he almost walked into a boy who was almost three feet shorter than him. "No one's melting, and I don't see any girls interested in Seth, so we know that the world isn't ending."

"Hey, where's Jared?" Seth asked, changing the subject.

"I don't know. Probably off somewhere being comatose with Kim," Quil said, and Seth smiled a little to himself, knowing that their friend was undoubtedly thinking about Claire. He glanced at Jacob, and saw that his eyes were on the ground.

"So… uh… how about that history test?" Seth asked, laughing, trying to switch to a lighter subject.

"What?" Jacob said, looking up at Seth, while Quil gave him a weird look.

"The history test. It was really hard, wasn't it? What did you put for that question about what you would've suggested to Napoleon if you could?" Seth continued, thinking about Juliet, oddly, and trying not to bring her up. _Oh great, just wait until I have to change for patrol. Embry's going to have a field day._ He thought.

"Free Bird," Quil said, grinning.

"I need to talk to you," came a new voice from in front of them. Seth looked up and saw Edward standing there, with Alice next to him. They both looked so out of place with their extremely pale skin and Alice's weird taste in clothes, Seth almost laughed.

"What about?" Jacob asked roughly as he and Quil instantly fell into the usual defensive, rude roles they took up whenever the vampires were around.

"Juliet," Alice said, not looking at all awkward about being in the middle of the La Push high school cafeteria, or all the weird stares she was getting, but rather staring intently at Jacob's face.

"We believe that she may have been… taken, by… one of us," Edward said, glancing carefully around at the people walking near them, before hissing, "Can we talk somewhere else?"

Quil and Seth both immediately turned to Jacob, who looked for a moment as though he was seriously considering turning them down, before he nodded and said, "Yeah, okay. You can come to my house."

* * *

**I'm sorry for the POV change! It doesn't really make sense, especially because it's the first time I've ever done it... Oh well, I hope you can understand it! Thanks for reading. ***And, quadratic equation, I don't really know what that is... But it sounds complicated! So I hope I didn't screw that up too much.**


	12. Chapter 12

**Oh my gosh, I wrote this all in about three hours this evening because I was SO jazzed and happy about all the nice comments and reviews I got. Even if there were only a few of them (ok, for the record, that was NOT meant to be a bitchy comment about me not getting that many reviews, sorry!) they made me smile. AND I finally figured out how to figure out how to view stats and stuff on my stories. I'm so excited that people in Australia, the US, Canada, Mexico, Romania, EVERYWHERE [well, not really _everywhere_, but my world is very small, haha] have read my story. Not bragging, just really, really happy. Thank you!**

**_Disclaimer: Twilight is (c) Stephenie Meyer. Sorry if this has a lot of errors, again, I had no editing time because I wanted to publish it tonight. One more thing! Sorry about all of the POV changes. I hope you can follow it--it made it funner to write!--plus I didn't want to make it like "Cliffhanger, meet Cliffhanger. Since you two are so similar, and there are SO many of you in this chapter, you should really be friends". Ha-ha, well, thanks!_  
**

* * *

When I awoke, I was sitting in a room filled with desks. For a second, I thought that I'd fallen asleep in class and missed the bell, until I remembered what had happened with Lily and Nathan. Also, this didn't look like an ordinary classroom.

All of the chairs were up on the desks, and some had cobwebs coming off of them. The whole place was covered with dust, and I held my breath so that I wouldn't sneeze. It looked like I was in an old school, or something, and clearly no one had been there for a while. Even the date that was still visible on the slightly warped chalkboard read _4th, May, 1902._

Wait a second—_1902?!_

I slid off of the table I was sitting on to get a better look at the room. The desks that I'd originally thought were just a bit run-down, I realized now were really hand crafted tables, and the text books stored on a shelf were all leather bound with ancient copyright dates.

I strained to hear someone—anyone—'s thoughts, but I couldn't, so I knew that I was either completely alone, or that Lily was near. Then I heard her voice.

"I don't understand why it was so easy to get to her though, the way Laurent talked about it, it sounded like they practically died to protect that other one," she said. Was she talking about me? I walked slowly to the door, trying to find out where her voice was coming from.

"Well, she must not be very important to them, that's all," said a bored-sounding man's voice, probably Nathan. If they were talking about me, and I couldn't imagine who else they were talking about (unless they were running some kind of teenage-girl kidnapping ring, which I didn't _want_ to imagine), then _ouch_.

"Hmm, I guess so. Even if she does smell delicious, I was sort of hoping for more of a challenge," Lily mused.

"There's something different about her though, isn't there? You said that she can normally read minds. I wonder why…" Nathan said, trailing off.

"She's probably just some kind of half breed mutant," Lily said—gee_ thanks_—before continuing, "but if she doesn't matter to them, I wonder why we could follow her scent from the Cullens' house."

"Maybe they were planning to feed on her themselves," Nathan suggested, chuckling darkly, and I could practically feel the blood in my veins freeze.

"No, not the Cullens," Lily said slowly. "They eat animals, don't you remember? Filthy people; and they call themselves vampires."

"Why did you bring her here, anyways? They'll be able to trace you back to this school," Nathan said after a moment of silence. I pressed my ear to the door cautiously, determined to find out more details about my location. That seemed like the smart thing to do.

"What? To St Sebastian's? Come on, Nathan, you know that this is my favourite place. All those dances in the great hall, the arduous classes, oh, the memories," Lily said, wistfully. Nathan snorted.

"You shouldn't be so quick to judge, Nathan. If you'll remember correctly, this is where we first met. Where we fell _in love._ Where you changed me so that we could be together forever," Lily continued, sounding like some sort of old romance novel. "I'll bet our initials are still in the desk where I carved them. Oh, to be young again."

At this point I rolled my eyes. Sure, it was nice to learn about the romantic past-lives of the two vampires that had kidnapped me, but personally I'd rather learn where exactly this _St Sebastian's _was.

That's when I stuck my hand into my pocket, twiddling my thumbs to pass the time, and realized something absolutely wonderful. I still had my cell phone in my pocket.

I practically screamed. Even though Lily could stop me from contacting Edward, or anyone else mentally, I doubted that her abilities covered cell phones too. _Who to call, who to call…_ I wondered. I scrolled down my feeble contact list, and wished that I had made more new friends, so I'd have someone to call.

_Aunt Joan_. No, for one, I didn't actually know where she was, and I didn't want to worry her. Well that's stupid, I thought. I had been kidnapped by two crazy vampires, taken away to some twentieth century school to have my blood drunken, and I didn't want to _worry_ her?!

I scrolled over her name anyways, and realized that I was at the end of my list. Oh great. I bit my lip, knowing that if I waited too much longer, Lily and Nathan would hear me, or realize that I was awake—if they hadn't already, and were just humouring me, or something. That's when I, for the second time, realized something wonderful.

I pressed the _Received Calls_ button, and held the phone to my ear, silently praying—

_**"Hey, this is Alice Cullen! I'm not here right now, so please—"**_

Alice's cheerful, musical voice came through the speaker, and I cursed under my breath. I had just about risked my life to phone her, and she wasn't even there?! I could hear footsteps coming towards me, and strained my ears until I could tell for sure that Lily and Nathan had stopped talking.

_**"—after the beep, bye!" **_

I closed my eyes, and quietly muttered a quick message, hoping that they would get it in time. If not, it didn't really matter, because Lily had just opened the door, the cell phone dropped from my hand, and I knew that I was already dead.

***

"WHAT?!" Jacob stood up, practically taking the table with him.

Alice shrunk away from him, while Seth just sat there (used to Jacob's outbursts), and Quil shot him a sympathetic look, aware of what his friend must be going through.

Edward was the first to speak. "Yes, Jacob, we all realize just how dire the situation is, but if you could just calm down, that'd help a lot, thanks," he said, and rolled his eyes.

"Plus I don't think your dad will be too happy if you destroy any more furniture," Seth said, trying to make a joke of it, while Quil gave him a _shut-up-now_ look.

"First you stupid leeches have to live here, then you take Bella, and now you let two vampires get to Juliet?! What the hell is wrong with you?!" Jacob shouted, now pacing in front of the others who were still seated around the table.

"Jacob, I know this must be hard for you," Edward began, but didn't get a chance to finish before Jacob was yelling again.

"'Hard for me'? _Hard for me?_ Damn-freaking-straight, this is 'hard for me'! You try loosing the one person who really matters! You try loosing Bella, or Jasper, or Claire!" he shouted, looking from Edward to Alice to Quil, and finally Seth. "You were her friend, weren't you? Why don't you care?!"

Seth shook his head a little, and said, "Jake, seriously, Edward's right. If you just take a breather for a little while—"

Just as Jacob had opened his mouth to start yelling again, Alice said, her voice totally calm if a little pleasantly surprised, "Oh. That's weird."

Jacob looked at her like she'd just suggested that they each go out and find a young child to sacrifice, while the others merely stared at her.

"What is it, Alice?" Edward said through gritted teeth, as though expecting Jacob to start shouting again at any moment.

"I have a message," she said brightly, holding up her phone, until she caught Jacob's eye and the smile immediately dropped from her face.

"YOU GOT A FUCKING MESSAGE?!" Jacob roared, nearly lunging at Alice, before Quil stood up and pushed a defeated looking Jacob down onto a chair.

"Hey, Edward, you might want to listen to this," Alice said, her voice was now colored with concern.

"What is it?" he asked, clearly a little irritated at Alice's apparent disregard for their current situation.

"It's, uh, it's from Juliet," she said slowly, squinting at the small screen on her cell phone, to make sure that she had read the name right.

In seconds they were all seated around the table again, with Alice's cell phone sitting on the table in the center of them. "Now, before we play it, you know that it could just be from the vampires that took her, and uh… it might not exactly say what you want to hear…" Edward said, looking at Jacob meaningfully.

"Just play it," he growled.

"Don't get your hopes up, okay?" Alice said, waiting for Jacob and the other two to give at least the slightest sign of agreement before she lightly pressed the 'play message' option that had appeared on her screen.

Before they even had a chance to lean forward, Juliet's quiet voice played through the speaker.

_"Um, uh, hi, Alice, this is, um, Juliet, and in case you didn't notice, I'm kind of… not in Forks anymore—I think. These two vampires, Lily and Nathan, came to my house and took me away, and she made me write a note, so just know that I didn't actually mean it, okay?" _

Alice smiled a little, before turning up the volume on her phone, even though none of the five—with their enhanced hearing abilities—really needed it.

_"So, um, yeah, well, I heard them talking, and I'm at this really old, empty school, that's called Saint Sebastian's, or something. Oh, yeah, and Lily has this weird power thing which makes it so that I can't read minds, and it's, um… it's really quiet here, ha-ha._

_"Oh, crap, I think they're coming this way, well, yeah, I just wanted you guys to know that you're really awesome, Alice, Edward, Bella, you made the… week? Was it only a week? Wow. Well, you made it really, really awesome, so thanks for that. Oh man, this sounds totally cheesy. Just make sure that my Aunt's okay, alright? And say thanks to Carlisle and Esme for being so nice. And Jasper, Emmett, and Rosalie, just for being themselves… and, uh… Seth! Right, Seth! I'm sorry I kind of forgot about you… Ha-ha. Thanks, Seth, for being so nice, and thanks what's-his-name… oooh, right, Embry. Thank Embry too. _

_"Uh, I really have to go now. I'll miss you guys—that sounds cheesy too. I'm just gonna hang up now before I say anything else lame. I guess that kind of counts, ha-ha. OK, bye."_

Juliet's voice ended and there was static for a few moments, until there was a banging sound, and the message ended.

They were all quiet for almost a minute, until Jacob finally spoke, his voice sounding rough, and said, "We have to find her."

Edward was the first to respond, and said while nodding, "Don't worry Jacob, I'm sure we will. I'll ask Carlisle what he knows about Lily and Nathan, I'm sure he's heard about them before. And Alice, why don't you look up 'St Sebastian's'. Let's go," he said, and Alice nodded, before the two of them walked quickly out of the house. In a few seconds, they could hear the screeching of tires as Alice and Edward began driving back to their house at break-neck speeds.

"Hey, Jake, I have to go, I'm really sorry dude. Don't worry though; they're going to find her, okay? And I'll talk to Sam—make sure he knows what's happening. You should get some rest, man, and remember, the pack's got your back." Quil said, giving Jacob a little pat on the back, before he too disappeared out the doors.

"He's right, Jake. We'll be here for you," Seth said, a little awkwardly.

Jacob nodded, but remained quietly staring down at the table where Alice's phone had been.

"Ok, I should probably—" Seth began, not wanting to sit around with Jacob while he was acting like this, but also not wanting to think about how bad a friend that might make him.

"Seth." Jacob said, looking up, and Seth winced when he saw the pained expression on his friend's face. "Seth, you're her friend, right?"

Seth was about to lie, and ask who Jacob was talking about, but instead he just nodded.

"She didn't mention me. In her message, she talked about you, and Edward, and even _Embry_. But she didn't mention me. Do you know how much that kills me?" Jacob asked him, looking devastated.

Seth shook his head a little, not really sure whether Jacob wanted his question answered, and instead took a few steps forward, before sitting down across from him. "They weren't lying. They're going to find her, got it, Jake?"

Jacob jerked his head forward in the slightest of nods.

"Hey, want to hear a joke?" Seth asked with a small smile on his face.

Jacob looked at him, his eyes slightly read, and asked in a flat voice, "What do you think?"

Seth continued, not listening to Jacob. "Ok, so, two blondes lock their keys in the car. One of them tries to break into it while the other one watches, and then the first blonde says, 'Darn, I can't get in the car!' then the second one says, 'Keep trying, it looks like it's going to rain, and the top's down!'"

Seth finished with a grin on his face after completing his joke—with the voices and everything—and looked at Jacob expectantly. Jake remained emotionless, until a small smile crept on to his face, and he said, "You're such a loser. Now let's go find Juliet."

***

"Well, well, well, what's this?" Lily asked, picking my phone up off of the floor.

"Um… a phone?" I said, not really sure if she'd been expecting an answer.

"I KNOW IT'S A PHONE, YOU LITTLE BITCH!" Lily screamed. I gasped—I guessed this was her vampire-equivalent of a five year old's hissy fit.

"Lily, calm down," Nathan said, walking into the room and wrapping his arms around her. "I'll take care of her."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, I felt tired, just like I had the previous time at my aunt's house.

"No, don't," Lily said suddenly, her voice cutting through the sleepy haze that had enveloped me. "I want to deal with this now."

I swallowed hard. Even though before she'd come in, I'd been fairly certain that I was dead. Not only that, but I'd even had the chance to say goodbye to Alice and all the rest of them—kind of. What more could I ask for?

I wanted to live, I decided at that moment. No matter how much time I'd spent in Australia, or Forks, wishing that I could disappear, crying over my parents, hating myself… none of it mattered. My mind was made up now. And I was going to fight back.

"AHHH!" I screamed, completely out of nowhere, and picked up one of the dusty text books off of a shelf. Before Lily could react, I threw it at her head, and despite my generally awful aim, it hit her directly on the forehead.

She and Nathan both just stood there, even after the book bounced off of her head and hit the ground. I was frozen too, standing completely still just like I had been when I threw the book, in a sort of javelin-throwing-like position.

_Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh g-_ I thought. If they weren't totally set on killing me before, they were now.

Then Lily started laughing.

…I honestly couldn't say who was more surprised—Nathan or I. He responded faster though, and started slowly chuckling along with her. And then I was the surprised one, because while Lily was having a giggling fit, I suddenly heard their thoughts flood into my head.

I bit on my tongue, fighting the urge to gasp. I just wanted to keep her laughing, and not noticing anything, so that I could see if there was anyone else around…

I quickly skipped over her and Nathan's thoughts in case they were able to tell what I was doing. I searched all over, trying to reach as far out as I could with my mind—something I'd never done before—and then I finally found something.

_Juliet! Juliet! Juliet! If you can hear this, we're coming for you. Which way was I supposed to go again? Oh… left! Right, I mean, correct, left! Right?_

_Juliet, we've arrived at St Sebastian's, or near it, okay? Just hang on. I hope you can hear this._

_Hey, Juliet, I hope you can hear this, we got your message. Thanks for thinking of me, ha. So glad I had such a profound impact on your life in this week. Oops, sorry Jake, fine, I'll pay attention. God, so demanding, huh Juliet?_

_Juliet—this is Jacob. I just wanted you to know… uh… just don't die, okay? I don't know what I'll do if… if you d-die._

I fought the urge to grin. Alice, Edward, Seth, and Jacob, if I wasn't mistake. Edward must've told them all to think my name, so that I'd notice them. They were close—that much I could tell—but were they close enough?

More thoughts came into my head; Emmett, Jasper, Rosalie, Embry, Quil, Sam, Paul, Jared… I could only tell some of their names because of their thoughts, but I could tell that all of the non-vampires were thinking together in a group, like one. Like a pack…

Oh right! I realized suddenly. Werewolves are like wolves. They must have a pack, right? It made sense, I decided, but somewhere inside of me I couldn't help but feeling a little twinge of pain at just how much they resembled real wolves. Did I really want wolves to come and save me? The same animals that had killed my parents? I tried to shake the wolf-related thoughts from my head, and suddenly realized that there weren't any thoughts in my head—well, no thoughts that weren't _mine._

Lily had stopped laughing, although Nathan was still chuckling darkly. "Lily, are you sure you don't want some help with this?"

"No thank you, Nathan. I think I'm going to enjoy this," she smirked, giving him a light kiss on the cheek and pushing him gently towards the door. He looked back at her, smiling in admiration, before leaving.

As soon as he was gone, she turned to me, and took a step towards me. She ran her long nails along my cheek. "Hmm… you're a weird little one, aren't you?" she cooed softly, as though she were talking to a baby.

I glared at her in response. Now that I knew people were coming after me I just wanted to keep her talking as long as I could, so I sighed, and forced myself to ask pleasantly, "Now why do you say that?"

Apparently Lily, for one, was done with talking though. Even before I was done my question, she'd grabbed my arm, and pushed on it until I distinctly heard a crack, and was fairly sure that it had broken. I whimpered in pain, a little, but didn't want to give her the satisfaction of knowing that I was suffering at all.

"You know, you're just like the rest of them, the _Cullens_," she spat out their name like it was a bad taste in her mouth. "They think they're so much better than the rest of us, just because they kill animals. You humans are just animals, aren't you?"

Before I even knew what had happened, she was on the other side of me. "You know what they did? They destroyed James and Victoria, just because they wanted to mess with one little human girl. Who cares about her, anyways? _They_ were my friends. _They_ knew what it meant to be a vampire. _They_ aren't outside the door!" she finished with a roar, and threw a desk across the room to where it was blocking the door.

I could hear footsteps running up to it, and voices calling my name. Where's Nathan? I wondered. Instantly, Lily was back by my side, whispering in the same dangerous voice as before.

"If you say one single word, I'll slit your throat right now. Imagine how your little friends will feel when they see my draining the last of the blood from your body when they finally find your lifeless body hear. Licking the sweet, red stain off of my lips… maybe they'll ask for a snack. That is, if Nathan hasn't already dealt with them…"

Her mouth was pressed to my ear, and she was speaking so quietly that I knew that not even the other vampires could hear her. I nodded as much as I could with her sharp nails pressed against my neck.

"Juliet! Juliet Ero! Where are you?!" I heard Alice's voice call.

I could practically feel the words forming in my throat, desperate to be said out loud, and my mouth opened slowly.

"If you even think about it, I won't just kill you; I'll kill every single _one_ of them, slowly and painfully." She said, her voice sounding like ice cutting through my mind, instantly making everything sharper, and the danger much more real.

I nodded again.

"Juliet, are you there? Juliet, where are you?" that was Seth. Once again I felt the urge to cry out, but I held the words in.

That was, until I heard one more voice. "Juliet! Come on, you must be here somewhere! If you're there, say something, please Juliet. Just say something!" Jacob.

Without even thinking about Lily, or Nathan, or anything else, I heard myself yelling before I really knew what I was doing. "I'M IN HERE! JACOB, SETH, ALICE, I'M IN HERE!"

Then, again before I really knew what was happening, I felt Lily tense, and her grip on my throat grow tighter. There was yelling outside the door; the sound of someone or something hard hitting the ground; a scream. Then everything went black.


	13. Chapter 13

**Hey. So sorry I haven't updated in a while, my internet's been down, and, uh… my hand got cut off, and a tree started growing out of my face, so typing has been a little difficult. Ok, so the first one was true, at least. Oh, and exciting news (not really!) multiple people reviewed saying that they wanted to see Juliet interacting with Jacob more, so, um, here it is! Almost an entire chapter full of awkward, lame, badly written interactions. Hope you enjoy.**

**Added note: I fail at this chapter! Sorry! So I'm making it extra long to make up for that. Or, trying to. By the way, HOLY FREAKING CRAP! Why are there **_**so**_** many characters in this story whose names start with the letter 'J'?!?**

**Oh man, I started writing this about a week ago, and just finished now. Sorry! I actually have a kind of, semi-decent (I hope!) way to finish the story. I think it's going to have a sequel. Very fancy, no? I hope someone actually reads this. I hope YOU actually read this. Wow, that was lame **

_**Disclaimer: Twilight is totally © Stephenie Meyer. **_

"Where am I?" I asked as I opened my eyes slowly. Of course it was basically the most over-used thing to say when waking up after being unconscious, but I was genuinely confused.

"Hey, Juliet," Alice said, appearing at my side, not answering my question.

"Alice, what's wrong?" I asked, seeing the worried look on her face.

"Well, um, see, after you yelled and we found out where you were, Nathan attacked us, and we're all totally fine, but while he was doing that, Lily managed to, uh, kind of beat you up a little," she said, looking me over.

I raised my head, which resulted in a sharp, shooting pain in my neck, but I didn't care. I could see that my clothes, and the floor I was laying on, was stained with blood—my blood.

"Alice, how bad is it?" I asked her, not really being able to tell for myself—or even stare at the blood for too long without feeling light headed. It was then that I decided that I would've made a horrible vampire.

"Uh, I can't really, can't, um, can't really say—" she said, before disappearing from view with a look similar to having to throw up.

"Alice?" I called as loudly as I could, although the room was beginning to spin.

"Sorry about that, Juliet. Alice still gets a little… uh, panicked, shall I say, when she's around large amounts of human blood," I could hear Carlisle say, although I couldn't see him. I blinked slowly, trying to figure out whether he'd been here the whole time.

"So, am I, um, well, am I going to die?" I asked, not sure how to phrase it, but for some reason feeling that I had to ask.

"No, Juliet, you most certainly are not going to. We'll see to that. But you did get a little bruised. More accurately, your left arm is broken, you've lost a lot of blood, and you have some rather deep cuts that we should attend to as soon as possible. I think it would raise too much attention were we to take you to the hospital, so we'll move you back to Forks and try to come up with a cover story," he said.

I inclined my head as much as I could with the amount of pain that it resulted in. "How is everybody else?" I asked quietly, with my eyes half closed.

"They're just fine. One good thing about us is that vampires heal miraculously quickly. Werewolves, too." He said, chuckling a little.

How many people were here? I wondered. Alice, Carlisle… I'd heard Edward earlier, and Emmett, and Jasper, and maybe even Rosalie. Some of the werewolves had been here too. Seth, Quil, Jacob…

"That's nice," I said slowly, before closing my eyes and laying my head down. I was so tired, that for a moment I was struck with fear that maybe Nathan was still there, but I was too tired to consider this, too tired to think. Too tired to do anything but try and ignore the pain taking over my whole body that was making the world very fuzzy, and just sleep.

***

"Where am I?" I asked as I forced my eyes to open despite their reluctance. It was the second time I'd said it, and I decided as firmly as I could while I was still trying to grasp my surroundings, that I really needed a new line.

"What are you doing here?" I added, while I sat up a little straighter and realized that I was sitting next to Jacob in some sort of vehicle.

"Nice to see you too," I could hear him mumble, and I smiled a little. It was so weird to think of him as a normal person, or, I guess, as normal a person as he could be. "You're in my car. I'm taking you back to Forks."

"Oh," I said, looking out the window and seeing the scenery flashing by, which made me feel like throwing up.

He nodded, and I turned my attention to my hands. My left arm was held in a sling that looked like it was just someone's sweater tied around my arm and neck. I had some cloth wrapped around my hands in what looked like make-shift bandages.

I suddenly felt a major feeling of déjà-vu. It was just like in grade three when I had fallen out of a tree while my class was on a field trip, broken my arm, and I had to be driven back to the school while the rest of my class continued learning about the native Australian wildlife. Except for the fact that I'd been in the back seat with a pack of ice, and the mini-van had been driven by my principal who was on his cell-phone the entire time.

"So you like cars, huh?" I asked, determined to make this car ride less awkward than the one in third grade.

He glanced at me quickly, I guess surprised that I had said anything at all. Then he turned his attention back to the road, and said, "Yeah."

"That's cool." I said, looking back at my hands. Ok, so, mission 'non-awkward-car-ride' had definitely failed.

We stayed quiet for a few more minutes. I tried to convince myself that Jacob was too intent on driving to make any attempt at conversation, but the highway was so empty that I knew that was hardly the case.

"You went to the campfire, right?" he asked, shifting in his seat a little. I looked up; completely taken aback that he had said anything at all.

"Yeah, yeah I did," I said slowly.

"You and Seth left pretty quickly afterwards," he said slowly. I turned back to my hands—that by now I had examined in great detail—and felt my face turn red. He had actually noticed when I'd left?

I nodded a little, not really sure what I was supposed to say. "So, do you and Seth, uh… well, do you, you know…" he said, trailing off.

"Um, sorry, but, I don't," I said, again not sure what he meant.

"Do you like Seth?" he asked, turning his full attention back to the road.

"What?" I asked, completely surprised.

"It's okay if you do, you know. I don't mind, I just, uh, wanted to know…" he said, shooting me a sideways glance.

"No, no," I said, shaking my head. "I definitely, one hundred percent, do _not_ like Seth. Oh, I don't mean it like that. He's really nice. But I don't _like_ like him, or… whatever…"

He looked a little relieved all of a sudden, and I took this moment to ask, "Why?"

"What?" he asked, and now it was his turn to look totally confused.

"Why does it matter if I like Seth?" I elaborated. "Unless he's like, a serial killer, which would be really creepy, especially since he gave me a ride home once, oh God, he's not a serial killer, is he?" I continued, immediately jumping to the most horrible conclusions.

"No, he isn't, or, uh, I don't think he is," Jacob said, a small smile on his face. "You remember the legends from the beach though, don't you?"

I nodded, suddenly wishing that I'd paid a bit more attention to them.

"Well… I kind of imprinted on you," he said quickly, not looking at me at all.

My eyes widened slightly, but other than that I was a little surprised that I wasn't _more_ surprised. "Oh," was all I could think of saying.

Again the car fell silent, and I bit my lip, trying to think of something to say. Talking out loud wasn't really my forte.

"Um, so, would you still like me, even if you hadn't imprinted on me?" I asked, suddenly feeling a weird need to know.

"Depends," he said, a grin appearing on his face.

"On?" I asked.

"What's your favourite band?" he asked, still smiling.

"Um…" I said, virtually unable to answer. I was never too great at picking out just which bands I liked the most, and now I had to deal with the added distraction of being questioned out of the blue, and the extremely hot guy who was sitting next to me, waiting for an answer.

_Oh God, get a room_. I heard Edward's voice in my head.

_We have the whole car._ I replied, before I really realized what I'd thought. I could practically hear him laughing. _What are you doing, anyways? Why don't you stick to your own thoughts?_

_I had to make sure that you too didn't crash, what with that animal at the wheel,_ he thought, and I could practically hear the disdain in his voice.

Jacob cleared his throat, and I remembered his question. "I don't know, maybe Metric?" I said, phrasing it as more of a question as I wasn't really sure about my answer myself.

"Oh, well, sorry then," he said, laughing. I smiled in return. "We're here," he added, and I looked up in time to see a sign saying _Welcome to Forks_ before it whizzed by.

"What's with you mythical creatures and driving fast?" I asked, thinking of the vampires.

"Mythical creatures?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

"You know what I mean, like, vampires, werewolves, that stuff," I said, waving my hand in the air and trying to explain while he laughed.

He had pulled up to my Aunt's house before I even knew it. "Oh, do you know what happened to my aunt?" I asked, afraid that Lily had done something to her.

"I think Carlisle said that she was knocked out, or something. I don't know. She's fine, though, she called him while we were waiting for you to wake up. I think he told her that you were staying over at their house, or something." He said, shrugging.

"Didn't Carlisle say that I was supposed to go to the Cullens' house when we got back?" I asked, just remembering it myself.

"Oh, right," he said sheepishly, and began to pull out of the driveway when the door opened and my aunt came flying out of the house.

"Juliet! Juliet, are you there?" she called, and came careening towards my door.

I rolled down the window just in time so that she wouldn't hit her head on the glass, or something, at the speed that she was running at. "Juliet, what happened to your arm? Where were you? What happened?" she said, talking so fast that I could hardly follow what she was saying.

"Um… I fell out of a tree," I said. At least the third grade incident was useful for something. "And I'm staying over at the Cullens' house tonight, or I was… didn't Carlisle talk to you?"

The fierce look on her face faded, and she said, "Oh, well, um, yes, I guess he did… Are you sure you still want to go though? And who's this?" she asked, instantly finding something else to interrogate me about. It was nice that she was concerned, I suppose.

"Carlisle's a doctor, Joan, so I'll be fine. Oh, and this is, um, Jacob. Jacob, this is my aunt," I said, not really sure how I was supposed to introduce a werewolf to my aunt who was standing in front of his car wearing her pyjamas and a bathrobe.

She nodded slowly, and said, "Ok, I guess… I'll see you later sweetie… do you want to take anything with you?"

"No thanks, I'll be fine. Thank you, Joan. I'll see you later," I said, smiling up at her, and waving as Jacob slowly drove his car out of the drive way, and in the direction of the Cullens' house.

"Um, I'm sorry about my aunt, she's kind of…" I began, not really sure what words to use to describe her.

"That's ok, she's nice," he said, smiling, although it looked a little strained.

"Are you ok?" I asked, immediately panicked that perhaps he had been hurt more seriously at the school than Carlisle had let on.

"I'm good, it just… smells kind of bad," he said, tightening his grip on the steering wheel.

I widened my eyes in horror. This was absolutely the most horrible time in the entire _universe_ to have B.O. "I'm uh, it's—" I began, having no idea what to say.

He shot me a weird look, before breaking out into a grin. "No, it's not you, it's just the leech—uh, the vampires." He laughed a little.

We talked a little more as we made our way to the Cullens' house, and by the time Jacob pulled into their driveway, I could see lights on through the windows, so at least some one was home. "So, do we go to the movies, or something?" Jake asked suddenly.

"What?" I asked, looking up at him, brought back to the real world suddenly after I'd been busy wondering how I should say good-bye to him without sounding like a total idiot.

"Well, are we supposed to go out on a date now?" my face went red, as I realized that maybe, just _maybe_, he was asking me out.

"I don't know…" I began, trying my hardest not to jump up in my seat and start dancing around yelling "YES! YES! YES!" Instead I said, "I've never really been, um, imprinted on before."

"And I've never imprinted on anyone before," he said, with a laugh.

"So what are a completely good looking, amazing werewolf, and a mind-reading imprint-y to do?" I asked without really thinking.

Jacob was quiet for a moment, before cracking a grin and saying, "You think I'm good looking?"

My face became a deeper red than even the blood that was seeping through my bandages a little. "Um, I guess, you know, what I mean is…" I said, completely unimpressed with my current verbal skills.

"It's always nice to hear about it, because sometimes I wake up, and I think,'wow, I look really good today,' and even Seth can't help staring, but we all know how jealous he is of my looks," he continued mockingly, laughing.

"I should go," I said, smiling and unbuckling my seat belt.

"OK," he said, nodding, and added, "I'll call you."

I snorted, laughing out loud at how cheesy that sounded. "Bye," I said, closing the door behind me and waving while I walked up to the Cullens' front door.

***

"Juliet, unfortunately the very fact that the two vampires, Lily and Nathan, knew about you in the first place suggests that somehow word has gotten out about you, which is very dangerous indeed. It would be foolish of us to simply assume that they had just been in the area… No, I think not. Since you're a human who knows about our being vampires, that alone could put you into a lot of danger, but considering the fact that you can read minds… I just don't know if it's safe enough to keep you here," Carlisle said, while wrapping a clean bandage tightly around my arm.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, looking up at him with my eyes wide—from a combination of pain and horror at what he could mean.

"What does who mean by what?" Alice asked, bouncing into the room and handing me the water bottle she'd gone to get. Her eyes were now a light golden color, and she seemed oddly okay about being around my blood.

"Alice," Carlisle said in a constricted sounding voice, that led me to believe that he was trying to convey a lot to her without letting me know everything. "Do you think you could contact Tanya and see if they might be able to have Juliet stay with them for a while?"

Alice maintained eye contact with him for a moment, before she nodded slowly, and again bounced out of the room. If she could read minds, I would've sworn that she had read his.

Oh wait—I can read minds, I remembered. It seemed a little crazy that I would've actually forgotten about my 'gift' at the one time that it might've been the most useful at all.

"I may as well just tell you what's going on, and save you the trouble of having to read my mind," Carlisle said, distracting me.

I nodded, and brought the water bottle to my lips. I took a deep sip of water, enjoying the soothing sensation it brought as the cool liquid hit my throat. I saw Carlisle watching me, almost intently, and I wondered if he was just waiting me to finish so that he could continue, or maybe trying to remember the last time he'd needed to drink things like water to stay alive.

"Like I said earlier, if other vampires know about you, they may, like Lily and Nathan, try to hunt you. This isn't just because of your gift, or the fact that you know about us. Actually, it could be as simple as the fact that you've been to our house on several occasions, and the scent of your blood is—don't take this the wrong way—rather appealing, so they could really just follow that. There are some vampires out there, however, that aren't quite so concerned with your blood as they are your gift.

"The Volturi are a group of very old vampires that reside in Italy. Normally they don't bother themselves with the affairs of other vampires—well, except other vampires with abilities they themselves want, I suppose—but when humans are involved they tend to care more. For instance, when they discovered that Bella knew all about us, and yet she was a human, they kept a bit of a watch on us for a while, and needless to say, they weren't pleased.

"If they were to find out about you, then I really doubt that they'd hesitate to come over here themselves, track you down, take your ability, drink your blood, and leave you to die. Yes, I know it's fairly gruesome—" he said, in response to my look of disgust, "—but they don't really care about ethics when it comes to humans."

"Um, who's Tanya?" I asked, trying slowly to digest this new information.

"She's a friend of ours, who we used to stay with in Alaska, along with several other vampires, all of whom believe in our 'vegetarian' way of life. I thought that perhaps if you could stay with her for a while, to get you out of the way until we can… let's say, discuss the matter with the Volturi peacefully, without any way for them to harm you." He finished his rather long explanation, and I thought about it for a few moments, before two thoughts came into my head.

'_Oh my God, what about Jacob?!' _And '_oh my God, what about Aunt Joan?!'_

"Wh-what about my aunt?" I chose to say, deciding that it might be easier, and infinitely less awkward, to talk to Carlisle about.

"That's the difficult part, given that we can't by any means tell her about what's really going on, and we can't exactly come up with any kind of credible excuse given that I've no idea how long you'd actually be gone for…" he said, trailing off in thought.

_No idea how long I'd be gone for._ I blinked slowly and kept my eyes closed for longer than necessary, hoping—as stupid as it sounds—that when I opened them again I wouldn't be here, and none of this would be happening. Where would I rather be, though?

While my eyes were closed I pictured myself as a little girl again, laughing and smiling with my parents, but for some reason I couldn't picture it right. My parents' faces were twisted almost maliciously with their smiles, and my laughter sounded like the sound that some kind of large bird might make. I tried to concentrate harder, this time on a different picture.

Now I was arriving at Forks again for the first time. My first day at school, I didn't look up at Edward, or Bella, even when I had to sit near them in Science. The wall in my mind never broke down, I never read anyone's mind, and Edward never found out about me. The picture was coming out wrong too. I played it back like a movie being projected on my closed eyelids. The whole time it seemed like no matter how hard I tried, they both already knew about me, and they kept shooting each other knowing looks, and grins, laughing at how hard I was trying to keep them in the dark.

I decided that I couldn't imagine that because I didn't want them not to know. I didn't want myself not to know them. That doesn't make much sense, but it's true.

The last time, I tried to picture something more recent. I decided to imagine myself back in the car with Jacob. A faint smile traced my lips, and I realized that that's where I'd most want to stay. I would forever sit there, blushing, laughing, and trying not to say something totally wrong. I would come up with a much better answer—no offense, Metric!—to Jacob's question about my favourite band, and he'd instantly fall in love with me.

I shot my eyes open, remembering that this whole time I'd meant to be 'blinking'. Luckily for me, Carlisle was looking at the wall to his right, apparently deeply lost in thought. I breathed a little sigh of relief that he hadn't been looking at me, and when he didn't look up even though he'd obviously heard me, I thought that I ought to do some deep-thinking myself. _Real_ deep thinking.

I thought about Lily and Nathan coming to get me, and then I tried to imagine them as dark hooded figures that practically gave off gloomy, scary, threatening vibes—the kind of images that I'd gotten from Carlisle's thoughts when he'd told me about the Volturi.

If they were as powerful as he'd said, then I was genuinely afraid of them—but not for myself. It's not like I was a particularly selfless person at all, but I figured that after I'd been kidnapped by two vampires, the worst might just about be over for me. I was far more concerned with what they might be able to do to my aunt, or the Cullens (not that they had any real reason to be afraid of anyone), or the werewolves (although, same as the Cullens), or Jacob, who was basically in a category all of his own.

"I'll go," I said quietly, jerking Carlisle out of his almost-trance.

"You'll what?" he asked.

"I'll go. To Alaska—to stay with your friends, Tanya, if they'll actually have me, I mean. We can tell my aunt… I don't actually know what we can tell her. Maybe that I'm going away to a camp or something. Or I could say that I'm going to stay with some other family—I'm pretty sure my dad had a brother…" I elaborated, trying to remember the name of this maybe-uncle.

"Alright. I suppose that could work. Are you at all concerned about, uh, well, the… Mr Black?" Carlisle asked.

"What?" I asked, wondering how he knew about Jacob (although I really should've made the connection. Vampire, werewolf, they probably at least know who each other are) and why he was asking.

"Well, you see, Juliet," he began in the same tone as my sixth grade teacher when she'd decided to give us a spontaneous sex-talk. I was practically bracing myself for the words, _'and when a man and a woman both love each other very much' _to come out of his mouth, but instead his took on a more… supernatural aspect.

"I don't know if you really understand what imprinting on someone means to one of the werewolves," he continued, leaving me to wonder how everyone but me had already known that Jacob had imprinted on me. "Being away from his imprint for an extended amount of time, and not knowing what was happening to you… it would be pretty hard on Jacob."

"I know," I answered shortly, not really trusting myself to say much more. "But if I stay here, and someone comes after me…"

Carlisle nodded, and I was relieved that I didn't need to continue. I knew what I would've said already—it was practically on the tip of my tongue. _What if they hurt him?_ The thoughts were whizzing through my head, making it a little hard to focus.

"Carlisle!" Alice practically dancing into the room. She had the sing-song quality back in her voice. "Tanya wants to talk you to!" she held out a phone, which Carlisle took, and I found it hard not to laugh that vampires, _vampires_, talked to each other on the phone.

He spoke in a hushed voice, and made his way out of the room—undoubtedly so that he could explain the situation without me hearing.

"So, Juliet, what's up?" Alice asked, practically radiating joy and confidence into the room. I sat down slowly onto the couch that was behind me—I hadn't really realized that I'd been standing this whole time before now—and Alice flopped down beside me, even though I knew she'd have been perfectly comfortable standing.

"I think I'm going away for a while," I said slowly, trying the words out on my tongue. "To stay with my uncle."

She nodded, paying more attention to my expression than my words, and I knew that she knew what I was really talking about.

"You have a good time, Juliet. With your uncle, I mean," she said, just as slowly as I had. "And be careful."


End file.
